A narrative common in the media in recent years is that the modern economy is not working for men: either men are failing at work or work is failing men. The headlines and op-eds blare, “Biden-Harris economy is leaving men behind,” “Women working more than ever as rising number of men don’t want to,” and “US faces a deficit of 6 million workers in less than a decade.”
Researchers and pundits have argued that prime-age men — those aged 25-54 — are turning away from work because wages are too low, video games are too appealing, or disability benefits are available. Many view disaffected men, including those who are underemployed or unemployed, as significant factors in Donald Trump’s reelection. Yet, the voices of the men themselves who are out of the labor force have been all but silent in this conversation.
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My colleague, Adam Talkington, and I interviewed 61 prime-age men in rural Wisconsin. All were out of the labor force—neither working a formal job nor actively seeking one. While labor force participation was nearly universal in the 1950s for prime-age men (98%), today more than one in ten prime-age men is out of the labor force.
We talked with men out of the workforce across Wisconsin
We sat down with these men to talk one-on-one in spots like public libraries and pancake houses. We asked about their work histories, how they made ends meet, and how they spent their time without working a formal job. We heard two messages come through strongly.
First, these men valued hard work and they took pride in their own expertise. This included skills they deployed on previous jobs, like washing skyscraper windows or running a dairy farm, and skills they used now, like refurbishing and selling used cars or learning how to do the electrical work on their own homes.
Second, their experiences in formal work included what felt like assaults on their dignity — supervisors who showed little care when they were injured on the job, bosses who crowed about their contributions and productivity yet refused to move them from temp to regular employees, or business owners who would not recognize and reward their skills with pay increases because they lacked formal credentials.
Men had often left their jobs for other reasons, injuries or downsizing, for example, but these shows of disrespect and lack of care dampened their enthusiasm to search for another job. Getting by through bartering, informal jobs like raking leaves or unloading trucks, or relying on a partner’s income while provisioning the family through gardening, fishing, and hunting could all feel like acceptable alternatives to formal jobs. And, in such settings, men had more control over their activities and how they were treated.
Meet a dairy industry worker who was let go from his job
For example, one man we met, who we’ll call Grant (to protect his privacy), was 50 and had worked for many years on a dairy farm. He’d been a jack-of-all-trades, he explained: “Worked seven days a week, 365 days a year. You know, cows never quit milking.”
He found satisfaction seeing the results of his efforts first-hand.
“That it was outside. It was on-hands work. And you were actually — you could see how the cows produce milk — actually, you could see how they grew up from calves to cows, having more calves…. You were doing something that you could see actually produced something,” he said.
After several decades, as the dairy industry evolved, Grant was let go. “[T]hey wanted schooling and degrees and stuff like that, and I didn’t have none of that. … They didn’t believe a hands-on person, you know, until a person that goes to school for it, can do the same work.”
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Grant was hurt that his bosses didn’t recognize his vast pool of knowledge and wide-ranging skillset. While he knew it would pay much better than the money he earned from Craigslist gigs or mowing lawns, he was unwilling to do the factory work he saw friends doing. With factory work, Grant told us, “Their souls are just, they’re like rows of [automatons], a computer. … Their dreams are shot.” While he scrabbled to put together resources every month, “I would rather have something to do that you enjoy. Even if it’s not a lot of money, or even if it’s, you know, tedious.”
While it is true that compensation matters, this was far from the only criterion the men we talked to used to evaluate work opportunities. What men like Grant were looking for from work was dignified treatment, recognition of their expertise, and work that felt meaningful. These are the same job features that college graduates seek and professionals expect; just because they were working manual jobs or those that didn’t require advanced credentials didn’t mean these men’s standards were lower.
If policymakers and employers want to encourage prime-age men to stay in or re-enter the labor force, hourly wage rates are just one piece of the puzzle. Respect on the job, acknowledgement of their capabilities, and tasks that feel productive and meaningful are important, too. If jobs treat workers like they matter, more men may show up for these jobs.
Sarah Halpern-Meekin is the director of UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty. She is also a professor of public affairs with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Vaughn Bascom Professor of Women, Family, and Community in the School of Human Ecology.
