Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)
I think that there is more to this story that just &quot;low education low skill men not working&quot;. I personally think that this has more to do with the poor state of psychological health at this socio-economic status.<p>Specifically, the people I know who fall into this category have one or more problems:<p>1. One (big) problem is that they often have an enabler -- that is, someone who is supporting these folks not working in some way. The fact that they don&#x27;t do more chores or childcare supports this hypothesis. As the video said, sometimes it&#x27;s the wife, sometimes it&#x27;s the government via disability, sometimes it&#x27;s family.<p>2. Another problem is issues with authority -- some of these folks are difficult or impossible to manage. Of course, sometimes it&#x27;s because the company&#x2F;manager is dysfunctional. Other times, the &quot;issue&quot; is that an employer sets healthy boundaries, and someone who does not have healthy boundaries will struggle to work within such an environment.<p>3. A third problem is simply drug use. There are a not small number of jobs that can be done by people with low education and low skills, but the employee must be drug-free or must be a &quot;functional&quot; drug user. There is definitely a chicken-egg question about drug use, but once drug use begins, getting and keeping a job becomes much more difficult.<p>In the video, they say education is one of the keys to help the situation, and I am not convinced that this is true with the current state of education in the US. The education that needs to be done is more social&#x2F;psychological in nature, imho. Until this happens, these dysfunctional people will continue to be dysfunctional. I don&#x27;t want to pretend like this type of education is easy, but I think that it&#x27;s closer to the solution.