How Are 7 Million Unemployed Men Actually Surviving? - Nicholas Eberstadt

1. 0:00 – 0:25

   Intro

   1. NENicholas Eberstadt0:00

      You can't say that this men without work thing is because there isn't any work for the men. Millions and millions of those jobs are not for, like, hedge fund managers or, you know, chemical engineers, a lot of jobs where the main qualification is showing up on time every day not stoned. And even so, employers have not been able to fill these millions and millions of extra jobs.

2. 0:25 – 6:51

   Exploring the Topic of Male Unemployment

   1. NENicholas Eberstadt0:25

      (air whooshing)

   2. NANarrator0:26

      How did you come upon the topic of male unemployment?

   3. NENicholas Eberstadt0:31

      Uh, I make my living off of, uh, finding things that are hiding in plain sight. I've been doing this for over 40 years. Uh, started during the Cold War, uh, looking at the Soviet health crisis, looked at problems of poverty in the US. This particular one came to me about 10 years ago when I was hearing happy talk about the, uh, about the full employment or near full employment situation in the United States from the Federal Reserve, from politicians, from Wall Street. And I was also reading things which said that half of Americans said we were in a recession. So, those two things don't really go together terribly well, do they? So, I was thinking, so what's- what's the problem here? And I pulled on the thread and realized very quickly what the problem was. Our national employment statistics system was developed, uh, to track the, uh, the Great Depression. And during the Great Depression times, you'd want to know how many people were unemployed, you'd want to know how many people were employed. And if a guy, uh, was neither working nor looking for work, you wouldn't even think this would be a great, uh, (laughs) a great phenomenon, that it would be kind of like a, you know, a little- a little bit of an end game. Today, it turns out that we've got, for prime age men, the 25 to 54s, we've got four times as many guys who are neither working nor looking for work as actually unemployed, as out of a job and looking for a job. So, if you're only looking at the unemployment number, you're missing four fifths of the problem. That's how I stumbled across it.

   4. NANarrator2:14

      What does that turn into in terms of actual numbers?

   5. NENicholas Eberstadt2:18

      Well, um, more than seven million... I- I'll get really nerdy on you, um, more than seven million men between the ages of 25 and 54, the prime ages for obvious reasons, um, who are in the civilian non-institutional population. Civilian, because, uh, we're not counting military. Non-institution because we're not counting prisoners or people who are in, uh, mental or health facilities. In other words, people who could reasonably be expected to be in the workforce looking for a job.

   6. NANarrator2:55

      What sort of men are in this group? Demographically, education, family structure, ethnicity. Who makes up this group?

   7. NENicholas Eberstadt3:03

      Well, as you would guess, Chris, uh, if there are seven million guys, there's some of everything, right? (laughs) That's a big number. But some are more in- represented than others. So, um, ethnically, African Americans are over-represented, but if we go into the persons of color formulation, uh, Latinos and Asian-Americans are underrepresented. So, um, so for white, non-white, it's almost a wash. Um, education's what you'd think. Uh, high school dropouts, way over-represented, um, with just high school, quite over-represented. But surprisingly large, um, we say representation of guys with college or even college degrees. 40% of this group has at least some college, and as I recall, about a fifth or a sixth are college grads. Uh, here's a funny one. Marital structure, family structure. Uh, it turns out that, um, married guys, no matter what their ethnicity, uh, are way less likely to be in this pool. They're way more likely to be out looking for work or having work. Uh, guys who have never been married, way more likely to be in this pool. And it's not just, uh, the- the wedding ring, although that obviously is a big predictor. If you, uh, if you're living under the same roof with kids and you're a guy, you're way more likely to be looking for work. I mean, that kind of, that's not surprising to me, but it's, you know, kind of like the provider effect or something. And last but not least, uh, the Census Bureau has something that they call nativity, which seems kind of weird to me. It sounds like a Christmas scene. Uh, it's, what they mean is where you're born. Are you born overseas or native born? Uh, foreign-born guys are way more likely to be not in this pool, um, no matter what their ethnic background, uh, more likely than their counterparts. And that's not a surprise to me, and I'm sure it's not a surprise to you in particular, because people who come here from overseas are kind of motivated to do something here, and they're- they're more likely to be in the workforce.

   8. NANarrator5:26

      A lot of overlapping, uh, different groups there. I remember hearing you say that a married African American man is less likely to be in this cohort than an unmarried white American man.

   9. NENicholas Eberstadt5:45

      Absolutely true. Absolutely true. And, uh, i- in effect, this, uh, this little ring kind of overcomes or erases the ethnic differential disadvantage, if you want to call it that. Uh, and there are other things, uh, like that as well. If you are a foreign-born guy and you're a high school dropout...... e- your labor force participation is going to be very close to that of a native-born college guy. I mean, it... So, it's not just, it's not just the disadvantage of the skills, right? I mean, there's something else, there's something else going on.

   10. NANarrator6:31

       Did you look at, uh, family structure that they came from? Were you able to break this down by single parent household that they'd grown up in?

   11. NENicholas Eberstadt6:39

       No, I wasn't. I mean, that's a really good question. It's a really good question. But, uh, but I, I didn't have the information that could, uh, could allow me to give you a good answer on that.

   12. NANarrator6:49

       Okay. So, we have,

3. 6:51 – 16:05

   Why Are So Many Men Unemployed in America?

   1. NANarrator6:51

      uh, upfront a rather dramatic seven million person cohort of men-

   2. NENicholas Eberstadt6:58

      Mm-hmm.

   3. NANarrator6:58

      ... in the US, a large chunk of whom are not looking for work. What is the story of modern male unemployment? How do we get to the stage where this is a hidden catastrophe?

   4. NENicholas Eberstadt7:15

      Well, like, like so many things in history, it happens gradually. It doesn't come upon us all at once like a meteor strike. Um, after the end of the Second World War, for about 20 years, the work rates and the labor force participation rates of this group of guys we're discussing, the 25, the 25 to 54s, was pretty close to 100%. Not, not 100%, but pretty close, um, and it wasn't going anywhere. It was bouncing around a little bit. Then starting in the mid-1960s, things started to change, and from, let's say, about 1965, s- s- it's a good year to mark it by, may not be perfect, but it's pretty close, from 1965 to our conversation today, it's been basically a straight line out, out of the workforce, of, um, men le- you know, a flight from work, leaving work, not in labor force, whatever you'd like to call it, and it's eerie if you track this on a graph or a piece of paper. Uh, I did a first edition of a book on Men Without Work in 2016, and I used, uh, I used this graph as the cover, which it, I mean, it's almost a straight line. I mean, it's, it's not quite, uh, geo, you know, geo astronomy. It's not quite that perfect, but it's pretty close for, uh, for the social sciences. And what was really shocking to me was when I came back to do a, you know, a- an update after, uh, after the pandemic, uh, last year, it's almost exactly the same line. I could have taken the cover of that book and just, you know, found a ruler and kept the thing going. Um, you know, I have no explanation for that. I mean, this is, th- this is something that happens in the f- you know, in the physical sciences. This is not something that happens in the social sciences, so I mean, it will change eventually, but I was just stunned by that.

   5. NANarrator9:26

      I heard that since around about 1950, men have retreated from the labor force at around about 0.1% per month solidly. Is that about right?

   6. NENicholas Eberstadt9:38

      Um, I'd have to do the, I'd have to do the numbers on paper, but it's been, uh, it has been absolutely relentless, and, uh, you know, I would've started it in the mid-60s. For the 1950s, um, for 1950s it's more or less a kind of a slightly bouncing line with no trend that I could divine.

   7. NANarrator10:00

      Okay.

   8. NENicholas Eberstadt10:01

      Uh, but-

   9. NANarrator10:01

      So, uh, well, economies, demographics-

   10. NENicholas Eberstadt10:05

       Mm-hmm.

   11. NANarrator10:05

       ... you know, unemployment-

   12. NENicholas Eberstadt10:07

       Yeah.

   13. NANarrator10:07

       ... we go through peaks and troughs.

   14. NENicholas Eberstadt10:09

       Sure.

   15. NANarrator10:09

       We go through cycles, boom and bust.

   16. NENicholas Eberstadt10:11

       Right.

   17. NANarrator10:11

       How have you managed to find, like, explain to me the underlying dynamic that has managed to create a, a ruler shape?

   18. NENicholas Eberstadt10:18

       Uh, yeah. All right. Um, well, we can start by the explanations that don't work, right? And, um, because those are always so popular, and they're, uh, I think they're called received wisdom, right? So, the received wisdom in this area, uh, is that this is a phenomenon driven by economic and structural technological change, that we've had this, uh, extraordinary revolution since the end of Second World War, which is true, and we've had this tremendous, uh, set of technological changes, and that's true. And we've had this big, uh, shift in demand, less demand for less skilled labor, true. Uh, outsourcing, true. China enters the World Trade Organization, true. True, true, true, true. Okay, but that's (laughs) , but that's not the whole story, and it's not even most of the story, I don't think. If it were most of the story, you couldn't get a straight line like the one I'm describing to you because we have the business cycle, right? I mean, we've got boom and bust periods, and they t- go up and down. Mm-mm. Um, you'd see a big, you'd see a big kapow when, uh, China enters the World Trade Organization, see a big disruption. Doesn't show up. Um, you know, when we have our, you know, beautiful little monsters that, you know, uh, uh, disrupt all our technology, you know, you'd see something. Mm-mm. So, (clears throat) that's not happening. What else isn't happening? Well, um, if you take a look at men with less skills, um, they are not all, you know, uh, commonly disadvantaged in the labor force. Uh, if you take a look at foreign-born guys who are high school dropouts but they're married, their, uh, work rates and, uh, labor force participation rates are indistinguishable, as I mentioned, from-... college-born. Uh, I mean, college guys who are domestic. Uh, on the other hand, if you take a look at a native-born guy who's never been married, it's a disaster. It's like 50% or less, uh, chance of being even in the workforce. So, in this group that's supposedly homogenous, there are like 40 percentage points of difference in participation, so that part doesn't work so well either. Um, the, the really biggest, I think, challenge to this, uh, idea, uh, is the, um, is the extraordinary peacetime labor shortage that we're having now, which at, at, you know, at, at time of our conversation, 10 or a million, uh, unfilled jobs in the United States. So, you can't say that this men without work thing is because there isn't any work for the men. I mean, and millions and millions of those jobs are not for like hedge fund managers or, you know, I don't know, you know, chemical engineers. There are, um, a lot of jobs where, uh, the main qualification is showing up on time every day not stoned, and, uh, and even so, employers have not been able to fill these millions and millions of extra jobs.

   19. NANarrator13:42

       Is that that employers can't get somebody to come and do the job without getting them fired, or is that that people simply aren't applying for the jobs?

   20. NENicholas Eberstadt13:50

       Uh, there are a, a lot of jobs that people aren't applying for. I mean, we've, we have... We have seen a spike of about four million in the total number of unfilled jobs since the eve of the pandemic. We have also seen a slump of about four million total, uh, in the size of the workforce by comparison to what we would have expected from the pre-COVID trends. Not all of these are guys, I hasten to say. We're seeing now a sort of a, um, new face to the flight from work in America, but the problem with the, you know, men fleeing the workforce was the original origin of, of all of this.

   21. NANarrator14:40

       How many women are added into this cohort?

   22. NENicholas Eberstadt14:45

       (clears throat) Um, if you count... If you count women who are over the age of 55, a considerable number. There are some under 55 as well. Uh, there is a problem that is, one might say, no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon heading towards us, which is the kind of the doppelganger, the, uh, uh, women without work. Uh, I'll men-... I'll tell you that in a moment, but if we look at the 55 plus group, um, they account for more than half of the shortfall that I just mentioned to you, uh, and this is a very new phenomenon, because from the s- fif-... From the, from the '50s until about the '90s, uh, American men and women were kind of starting to enjoy the notion of retiring early. But from the mid-'90s up to the, uh, eve of COVID, um, these older workers were basically the only bright, uh, spot in the American labor tableau. Uh, their work rates were going steadily up. Their labor force participation rates were going steadily up, but since then, there's been a shock and a drop, and despite the rollout of COVID, of vaccines and everything else, they haven't come back to the workforce.

   23. NANarrator16:04

       Getting

4. 16:05 – 23:15

   How These Men Are Surviving

   1. NANarrator16:05

      back to this big cohort of invisible men-

   2. NENicholas Eberstadt16:09

      Yeah.

   3. NANarrator16:09

      ... how are they surviving and paying for life?

   4. NENicholas Eberstadt16:12

      Hmm. Well, um, as best I could, uh, as best I could figure out as a research nerd, um, you know, kind of looking at statistics and, you know, and on, like on my computer in the basement, um, it looked to me as if there's a couple of different factors. Uh, girlfriends and family, as long as you count Uncle Sam as part of the family, um, people are... They're quite a large number of these guys who are living with people, I mean, uh, either cohabiting or at home with parents or others, uh, and that's helping to pay the bills. Uh, what's also helping to pay the bills, uh, is, as I said, uh, y- the US government, in particular, uh, our disability programs for people who are unable to work. Those programs seem to have morphed away from their original humane intention, and now seem to provide an alternative income source to regular employment for s- several millions for... Actually, for millions and millions of these guys.

   5. NANarrator17:33

      How many? Uh, what's, what's the proportion?

   6. NENicholas Eberstadt17:35

      This is a really hard question to answer, um, uh, but I'll do my best. The... It should be an easy question. You should be able to go to an office in Washington and ask a bureaucrat how many checks are being cut for people who are on disability. I mean, taxpayers want to know, right? I mean, sounds like a pretty easy thing, hm-mm. Reason it's not easy is because we have a crazy quilt of disability programs that don't play nice with each other, uh, so the Social Security Administration has three different programs that kind of talk to each other. Then there's the Veterans Administration that has veterans' benefits. Then there's, uh, workmen's comp programs all around the country. Then there are state-level, uh-... disability programs. There are probably others that I don't even know about. Um, as best I could figure out from, you know, trying to draw in these, you know, draw in the dragnet, uh, before COVID, over half of the guys who were in this seven million pool, um, were obtaining at least one of these benefits, m- many of them were obtaining more than, more than one, and about two thirds were living in a home that was getting at least one of these benefits. Now, I would hasten to add that these are not, um, these are not princely prizes that these guys are getting. It's pretty penurious. But i- with the add-ons from other welfare benefits which you can, um, become eligible for through disability is enough to provide this alternative to working life.

   7. NANarrator19:22

      Okay. So, that may be able to get them by. Given the fact that they're not working, not in education, employment, or training, what are they doing?

   8. NENicholas Eberstadt19:34

      Um-

   9. NANarrator19:34

      What are, what are, what do they spend their time doing?

   10. NENicholas Eberstadt19:36

       Well, we only know what they say they're doing, and we know what they say they're doing because they answer surveys that Uncle Sam sends them sometimes. The, uh, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, uh, has this annual program it calls American Time Use Survey and it asks thousands and thousands of people, "What do you do from the moment you get up in the morning till the time you go to sleep, and how long do you sleep, and..." So, they don't just ask people who are working. They're, uh, peop- uh, they ask people who are adults of all ages. Um, so we've got a fair, uh, you know, a fair number of returns from the neither working or looking for work guys, right? Now, I hasten to say, everybody is a liar and surveys are full of lies, but we can take this, you know, self-reported, um, information as a first cut. They, they say they basically don't do, um, civil society, uh, with almost no worship, almost no, uh, charitable work, almost no volunteering. Uh, they got a lotta time on their hands, we know that, but they do surprisingly little housework. They say they do surprising little housework, and surprising little help with other people in the home. What they say they do a lot of is watch screens. Now these surveys don't tell you what they're watching or how they're watching it, just, you know, that they're screen time, about 2,000 hours a year. Okay, now 2,000 hours a year would qualify as a fair full-time job. I mean, maybe not if you're in a law firm, but pretty much anywhere else, it would qualify as a pretty, uh, pretty good full-time job. And, um, the skill which they're developing is (laughs) being in front of a screen on a couch. Um, and to make the, the situation even more dispiriting than that sounds, every so often these surveys have a little extra component of questions, and before the, um, before the pandemic, one of these components was, "Do you take pain medication?" And about half of these guys said, "Yes, I take pain medication every day." Now, it doesn't say what the medication is, doesn't say if it's actually a prescription, uh, but that's a lot of people sitting on their couches in front of screens, stoned.

   11. NANarrator22:12

       Am I right in saying that what you've just said is of this NEET seven million cohort-

   12. NENicholas Eberstadt22:19

       Mm-hmm.

   13. NANarrator22:20

       ... on average, they spend around about 2,000 hours per year watching screens?

   14. NENicholas Eberstadt22:25

       Mm-hmm.

   15. NANarrator22:25

       And of this same cohort, half of them are taking daily pain medication of one kind or another?

   16. NENicholas Eberstadt22:32

       That's, that's what they say. And I sh- I should be a little careful about the, uh, not in labor force versus NEET. Uh, about 10% or slightly more than 10% of these guys are basically full-time students. Uh, they're, they're getting ready, they're training to get back to work. Their time use looks like an employed guy's time use.

   17. NANarrator22:54

       Right.

   18. NENicholas Eberstadt22:54

       So we're talking about six plus million who are in the NEET pool.

   19. NANarrator23:00

       I was gonna say, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, silver lining around a cloud to say, "Oh, th- there is 10%, there's 10%." Uh, uh-

   20. NENicholas Eberstadt23:07

       Yeah. It's not all seven million.

   21. NANarrator23:09

       Don't you-

   22. NENicholas Eberstadt23:09

       But it's a big number. It's a big number.

   23. NANarrator23:11

       So, almost all of them. Okay.

   24. NENicholas Eberstadt23:12

       Yeah.

   25. NANarrator23:14

       What about

5. 23:15 – 30:40

   Impact of a Criminal Record on Male Employment

   1. NANarrator23:15

      the way that being, uh, having a criminal record gets folded into this?

   2. NENicholas Eberstadt23:21

      Well, 'cause once again, uh, there is no office you can go to in Washington, and Washington has a great many offices that can tell you how many, uh, how many adult felons there are in the US or how many prime age guys have a criminal record. Um, and I tried (laughs) I tried to get at that, and, uh, the best I could do was to use some, uh, I think pretty good work by some, uh, you know, defiant demographic nerds who tried to reconstruct the whole post-war period of crime and punishment, how many people had survived over the long period, how many had gone back to jail. Um, they estimated that as of 2010, there were 19.5 million adults, overwhelmingly men, in the United States who, um, had a criminal record. And with a reasonable back of the envelope estimates, that would take us to about 25 million today.We know that the US has got this famous mass incarceration thing going on, but the prisons have got about two million, uh, people in them. You know, that means that for every person who's behind bars, there are 10 million or more, uh, or 10 or more who, um, you know, are in society as a whole, in general, and not of, not behind bars, have a, have a criminal record. Um, my o- my own, uh, back of the envelope, and I can't be too, you know, can't be too precise about this given the uncertainties, but my own back of the envelope is that about one in seven adult guys has a criminal conviction in his background in the United States of America at this point, and probably slightly more than that in the prime age group. So, we're talking about a lot of, uh, a lot of guys with, uh, convictions in their background who are kind of invisible to our statistics. But from what little evidence of our senses, uh, you know, we can draw upon, they're way more likely, uh, you know, not to be at work, to be in this kind of pool.

   3. NANarrator25:45

      Have you got any idea whether that's because they're struggling to be accepted for jobs, because they have-

   4. NENicholas Eberstadt25:49

      (clears throat)

   5. NANarrator25:49

      ... to list the fact that they do have a, a felony record?

   6. NENicholas Eberstadt25:53

      You know, it's maddening, um, that's, it's maddening because I can't give you, uh, a straightforward answer to this, uh, which is a terribly important question, and millions of people's lives depend on the answer to it. Um, we, we don't have the evidence in a sort of a statistical way. You know, we've got this world of anecdotes and there are, you know, thousands and thousands of points of, uh, light out there that are trying to deal with this, but they're all disconnected. Um, if we had... If we lifted a finger and got this information together, which we could do pretty quickly, um, wouldn't be perfect, but it would shine a big, uh, big light on part of this, we'd have the evidence for evidence-based programs all around the country, um, and we don't have that. There... It's clear that there are some areas where there are i- restrictions, uh, against, uh, uh, employment of ex-cons, including the financial sector and other places. Um, there's a whole question about whether the ban the box question, w- whether there should be a ban the box, whether asking, uh, people if they've had, uh, trouble, uh, is, uh, prejudicial. My own contrarian impression is that employers actually end up discriminating more if they don't know the answer to that question. They kind of overestimate on their own part, and they're more likely to, um, they're more likely they'd be suspicious of low, less-educated minority, uh, young men than if they had the actual information, but that's my impression.

   7. NANarrator27:38

      So, your concern is that a- among many, many concerns, is that because we have s- very, very inferior data to what we should do in order to be able to dig down into this, any interventions that you do want to do to try and fix the problem can be pointing in the wrong direction, they can miss the mark entirely, because we don't know. Let's just use the ex-con felony, uh, example cohort. You don't know if it's an in- intervention that needs to be done on the side of the employer to encourage employers to bring on people who do have criminal records. You don't know if the intervention needs to be to get these people from prison back into looking for jobs, get them into training, get them into the routine. Maybe it's support groups. Maybe it's something to do with psychological health. You don't know where this issue is coming from because you have insufficient inferior data.

   8. NENicholas Eberstadt28:27

      Well, there, there will be people who are working in, you know, God's own trenches, you know, with re-entry for ex-cons, who will have a wealth of knowledge on this and who can, uh, tell everybody more about this. But in terms of numbers and patterns, I- we're blind on this. As a general observation, we always have to be careful f- about unintended consequences, because there's always a policy and there's always an unintended consequence of the policy. And if you don't ask about both of those, you're not looking at the whole situation.

   9. NANarrator29:10

      How haven't we heard more about this? Like how haven't, how haven't we heard about this huge seven million man d- behemoth?

   10. NENicholas Eberstadt29:20

       Well, I have some guesses. Uh, I mean, one guess is that this is a disadvantaged group that doesn't fall within the academy and the media's preconceptions of disadvantage. They're, um, you know, they're guys. They're, uh, you know, prime working age, and they don't fit, fit the victim profile terribly well, so, you know, horsemen pass by. I mean, that's part of it. Um, it's also true that in the United States the, um, these prime age men have not been a menace to society. They've been a menace mainly to themselves. They've been dying of deaths of despair and overdoses. They haven't been out, uh, like in the banlieues of, uh, Paris, like, setting the cars on fire. Uh, so they haven't been getting, uh, a lot of attention, uh, for themselves. And, um, you know, because they're not an organized political group, there is no real constituency for them. So, um, you know, as long as... So-They can be neglected, uh,

6. 30:40 – 33:45

   Differences Between Poverty & Misery

   1. NENicholas Eberstadt30:40

      at no great peril for any immediate constituencies in the country.

   2. NANarrator30:47

      I've heard you talk about the difference between poverty and misery, as well.

   3. NENicholas Eberstadt30:52

      Yeah.

   4. NANarrator30:52

      How does that fold in?

   5. NENicholas Eberstadt30:54

      Um, by any 19th century, uh, standard, whether it was in the UK, or in the US or Australia, or in, uh, any of the affluent societies of the 1800s, these guys are rolling in money. I mean, they're- the- all- they're probably in about the second quintile on average, in our consumption scale in the United States, but that would make you a very, very, very wealthy person back in the 1860s or 1870s and- and in any of our English-speaking countries. So, lack of resources, lack of material resources is not the issue here. Um, they- you can be miserable on quite a high standard of living, and the degradation that these men experience, or self-inflict to some degree, um, is, uh, you know, it's heart-rending, and it- it's a tremendous loss of human potential, but just think of it, I mean, y- you don't have to be a philosopher to know that, you know, 2,500 years ago Aristotle said that, you know, that we're- human beings are social creatures. You know, if you're not connected to society and you're a human being, you kind of suffer for it, uh, and that's why, you know, that's why solitary confinement is, uh, considered a cruel and unusual punishment by some people. Uh, so if you're not connected to work, you're more likely not to be connected to family, uh, like- more likely not to be connected to faith, although that's an- another story, and you're- you don't even go out of your house to be in your community, um, you know, that is a pretty miserable baseline. I mean, I can imagine being out of work and spending all of your time doing community gardening or volunteering or, I don't know, um, memorizing Capital in the original German or something, I mean, or something like that which would be, uh, a use of your time, uh, that wouldn't necessarily degrade you, but what I've described to you is not that. It's- it's kind of like a path of misery.

   6. NANarrator33:25

      Yeah, wanking on weed isn't the same as hoeing a garden and- and building some flowers. So, th- this is one, uh, really, I guess, interesting area that I've spoken about an awful lot recently. I flew to Doha to have a debate about traditional masculinity being degraded and stuff.

7. 33:45 – 37:09

   The Evolving Role of Masculinity

   1. NANarrator33:45

      What do you understand about how men are seeing themselves and their role in the world given this change in terms of what they're doing, uh, with work?

   2. NENicholas Eberstadt33:59

      Well, um, it's, you know, you don't- you don't have to be a sociobiologist to say that there is something unnatural about society and history's long-term providers suddenly being flipped into this position of dependence, uh, and you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to think that there might be some sort of psychological fallout from this inversion here. Um, whether this speaks to, um, greater metaphysical problems in the US or the world is a- uh, is a bigger topic. Um, my- uh, my boss, uh, Mary Eberstadt has opined about that at some length, and she's always right, so, uh, I will defer to that.

   3. NANarrator35:02

      I am very interested in the idea of providers becoming dependents, and us not having the language or the archetype framing or the guardrails to be able to give them something that makes them feel proud, and then also the distinction between poverty and misery, you know, being told that you are from a, uh, benefiting from the past oppressive, uh, patriarchal super structure which has given you all of the advantages that some other group hasn't had. Meanwhile, guys are, you know, not starving, at least in terms of for money or for food-

   4. NENicholas Eberstadt35:43

      Mm-hmm.

   5. NANarrator35:43

      ... but very much are for meaning, very much are for social connection-

   6. NENicholas Eberstadt35:46

      Yeah.

   7. NANarrator35:46

      ... very much are for sobriety.

   8. NENicholas Eberstadt35:49

      Sure.

   9. NANarrator35:49

      Um, it's- it- it just seems to me like the absolute sort of synthesis-

   10. NENicholas Eberstadt35:56

       (clears throat)

   11. NANarrator35:57

       ... of everything that performative empathy allows to happen, which is to do what looks good in place of what is good when it comes to trying to enact social policy and campaigning for people that are struggling.

   12. NENicholas Eberstadt36:14

       Well, I think you've put it very well. Um, you can take a technocratic approach to addressing some of the problems I've described. Um, the nice thing about a technocratic approach is that you can pretend that it is value-neutral, but what we are describing here is completely laden with values, and, uh...... the normative questions of how you find meaning in life, and what one does with life, and what your purpose is, and what, you know, what fills the soul, you know, what fills the hole in your soul is absolutely critical here. And, you know, if we kind of, um, pretend, (laughs) pretend none of this really matters, well, you can kind of guess what's going to happen.

   13. NANarrator37:07

       This, to me,

8. 37:09 – 41:56

   Would Universal Basic Incomes Be a Net-Negative?

   1. NANarrator37:09

      seems to point a rather worrying picture at the potential for UBI, not that I was a, a massive proponent of it in any case. But you mentioned that the pandemic basically caused Washington to stumble into a dress rehearsal for UBI, and we're seeing these guys who have sufficient material wealth to be able to keep them going, but they don't seem to be flourishing.

   2. NENicholas Eberstadt37:36

      There's a whole argument about whether, uh, UBI would bankrupt, uh, our, you know, public finance system. Uh, that's a separate argument. Um, it's a very important argument, and it might put an end to this discussion right there. I would say, however, um, take a look at the time use of these NEET men, and then ask yourself, do you want to buy more of this? Is this something that society should really want to subsidize? Because you're going to get it. You're going to get a lot of people with UBI who have a lot of time on their hands, uh, what are they going to do with that if they don't have the, you know, gyroscope for it? Uh, and absolutely during, uh, uh, during the early months of the pandemic, actually for almost a year and a half in the pandemic, we were dispensing more benefits in pandemic uninsurance, uh, than, u- unemployment insurance, than we had unemployed people in the United States. At one point, for every 100 people who were unemployed, we had about 250 beneficiaries of pandemic unemployment insurance. So, it, it was indeed a, uh, kind of a test drive. Fortunately, it's over. Uh, what's unfortunate is we don't know how long the lingering effects of it, uh, will reverberate or how badly they will reverberate.

   3. NANarrator39:10

      Would you guess, would you hypothesize that there is going to be a hangover of some kind, that the, uh, trend and the, the routine that people got into of not working during the pandemic is going to set a habit going forward?

   4. NENicholas Eberstadt39:27

      I think we're living in it right now. Look around. Um, uh, 10, 11 million open jobs, uh, Great Resignation giving more bargaining power to people who are job applicants than any time in my long life. Uh, millions of people still sitting on the sidelines, more than before the pandemic. Th- that sounds to me like, uh, like immediate consequences. What we can see from the labor market is, if you stay with the labor market, uh, if you're, if you declare yourself unemployed, your chances of getting back to work within a matter of weeks are very high. Once you cut that line, it's a little bit like, you know, going off onto the space shuttle. Then you're co- you're kind of out in space, and your odds of, uh, doing something other than being a long-termer, uh, get really bad.

   5. NANarrator40:28

      I thought that unemployment rates weren't that bad at the moment, overall. What sort of fuckery is going on with the numbers to be able to allow your world and the world of low unemployment to exist together?

   6. NENicholas Eberstadt40:44

      Well, we've, we've ended up with the best of all possible worlds, haven't we, Chris? We've got l- the, we've got low unemployment and also low work. And so, how do you add up low work, low u- unemployment, and what's the rest of it? Oh, it's the people who aren't looking for work. I remember now. So, we've got this, uh, we've got this circumstance which, of course, only a fabulously affluent society could afford without immediately careening into disaster. You know, we can eventually careen into disaster with this, I guess, but we can postpone it for quite a while. Um, and this is, this is what happens when you're fighting the last war. Our, uh, employment statistics are still fighting the Great Depression. So, they get great numbers on, or good, as good numbers as they can get on unemployment, good numbers on work, and then whatever the other thing is, uh, well, that wasn't happening much during the Depression, so here we are.

   7. NANarrator41:42

      Oh, because anybody that could work would work back then.

   8. NENicholas Eberstadt41:46

      Mm-hmm. That was the presumption. And, and I think it was probably a pretty good presumption.

   9. NANarrator41:52

      That's very interesting. So, I'm, I'm currently kind of obsessed with

9. 41:56 – 46:35

   What is Causing Malaise in Men?

   1. NANarrator41:56

      the role of men in the modern world that retreat from, uh-

   2. NENicholas Eberstadt42:01

      (coughs)

   3. NANarrator42:01

      ... relationships, that retreat from friendships overall. Have you considered if there is a broader dynamic going on here that ties together the general sort of malaise that men are finding themselves in?

   4. NENicholas Eberstadt42:17

      Um, well, I'm not a philosopher, but I do demographics, and I can count. And, uh, I mean, I'm a, uh, I'm a, I'm a 67-year-old grandfather with four kids, right? And so, I am so far from (laughs) the, the forefront of the battlefield right now that I can kind of read it the way I read science fiction and try to kind of understand it. Uh, but the, the idea that, uh...... the idea, let's see, how do I put this for a family audience? The idea that young men would not be interested in real, live women, uh, would have been kind of, uh, absurd, uh, 50 years ago.

   5. NANarrator43:03

      Did you see... So my favorite, uh, most terrifying piece of research that I've seen recently was from Pew. Uh, in 19, uh, in, uh, 2019, 61% of men said that they were looking for either casual or long-term relationships. In 2023, that number has dropped to 50%. One in two men between the ages of 18 and 30 aren't looking for either casual or long-term relationships.

   6. NENicholas Eberstadt43:33

      Well-

   7. NANarrator43:33

      Now, for the men that are listening who have been through that age bracket or are in it, you understand the power, the reality distortion field that is the male sex drive between the ages of 18 and 30. The fact that you can have something that happens that can overcome that is-

   8. NENicholas Eberstadt43:49

      Yeah.

   9. NANarrator43:49

      ... wild.

   10. NENicholas Eberstadt43:50

       Yeah. Yeah, it's like science fiction. Uh, and-

   11. NANarrator43:53

       So what's going on? Come on, Nicholas. Give me... Put your best philosopher tinfoil hat on-

   12. NENicholas Eberstadt43:57

       (laughs)

   13. NANarrator43:57

       ... and give me, give me your ideas.

   14. NENicholas Eberstadt44:00

       Sure, sure. Um, I started looking at this... We're, we're getting a- a way, a little bit from men without work, but I think I'll wander back to it. Um, I started looking at this in Japan, the numbers about Japan, about, uh, uh, two decades ago, when, uh, young men and women were not only saying that they w- were less likely to have had sex by given, you know, 20, age 25, age 20, whatever, but also saying that they're less interested in this. And at the time, I thought, "Well, everybody knows that the Japanese are just separate from the rest of humanity. They see us as all Gaijin. They see us as all unspeakably weird. This is just some Japanese thing." Little did I know that this was the leading indicator for where everything else was going to be going, and I had assumed that we were just in our regular garden variety family decay thing in, you know, post, uh, war America. But then this, um, this new eruption comes along, and the, uh, you know, the wonderful little devices kind of turn out to be turbocharging this, or at least complicit in some sort of way with this. And, um, I again defer to my boss, Mary Eberstadt, um, um... M- Mary has, um, I won't say argued, but she has ominously mused about the possibility that nurture and wanting family and wanting children is not something that is hardwired into us in our DNA inviolably, but rather is something more like a muscle that we develop through use and through seeing, the same way that little cats know how to climb down from trees if they live with other cats, and they get stuck up in the trees if they don't have cats to look at.

   15. NANarrator46:01

       Oh, okay. So it's kind of like a memetic-

   16. NENicholas Eberstadt46:05

       Yes, mem- exactly. Rene Girard, a mimesis-

   17. NANarrator46:08

       Yeah.

   18. NENicholas Eberstadt46:08

       ... that sort of thing. Yeah. I mean, that's-

   19. NANarrator46:09

       Okay.

   20. NENicholas Eberstadt46:09

       ... that's the musing of it. I, you know, uh...

   21. NANarrator46:11

       Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I mean, so there's a guy, Stephen Shaw. Are you familiar with Stephen?

   22. NENicholas Eberstadt46:16

       Y- I've, I've heard the name, yeah.

   23. NANarrator46:18

       Yeah, so he did Birthgap, which is a fantastic documentary.

   24. NENicholas Eberstadt46:21

       Mm-hmm.

   25. NANarrator46:21

       I know that you're big on-

   26. NENicholas Eberstadt46:22

       I haven't-

   27. NANarrator46:22

       ... your-

   28. NENicholas Eberstadt46:23

       I talked to him, I talked to him a while ago. I haven't seen the documentary.

   29. NANarrator46:26

       He was in Qatar with me, so he-

   30. NENicholas Eberstadt46:28

       Ah.
10. 46:35 – 51:16

    Is Nicholas Worried for the Future?

    1. NANarrator46:35

       Um-

    2. NENicholas Eberstadt46:35

       Yeah.

    3. NANarrator46:35

       ... I mean, going back to the men and work thing, but also feel free to fold-

    4. NENicholas Eberstadt46:42

       Yeah.

    5. NANarrator46:42

       ... demographic collapse in as well. How worried are you about all this?

    6. NENicholas Eberstadt46:46

       Well, I'm worried about it as a citizen. I'm worried about it as a researcher. I'm worried about it as a parent and, you know, a grandparent, somebody who'd like to see, you know, our society continue. Um, things can turn around. Things d- things don't always head in a linear direction. In fact, they seldom seem to head f- for very, very long in a linear direction. This 50-year trend in, uh, the exit from the labor force is a pretty long linear trend. Uh, it's, it's exceptional in that way, I think. Um, what'll turn it around I think is, uh, is some, uh, is not going to be, uh, economic and, uh, structural change. It's going to be a change in people's viewpoints and values and metaphysics. We've had, um, as you know, we've had a couple of, uh, great awakenings in the United States in the past. We've had other little eruptions. Um, it's going to be a change in mindset, and, um, I don't see, I don't see why we can't have a change in mindset. As a, you know, as a social observer/analyst, I can tell you that our tools are poor enough that it takes us a while even to recognize when a change has already started. So (laughs) for all we could know that, uh, you know, this conversation has already started, and I'm too, you know, blind and weak to have detected it yet.

    7. NANarrator48:22

       Are you alluding to the fact that a social change to be able to give some sympathy, support to the chunk of men that are in this seven million?

    8. NENicholas Eberstadt48:35

       Um, y- not ju- yes, yeah, of course, o- of course empathy and support. I mean, we have an e- extraordinary empathy gap.... in the United States today. Uh, w- w- we can't even, uh, people who are in the intellectual classes and the describing classes can't accurately describe the arguments of people with whom they disagree because of, because those arguments are bad and evil. (laughs) You know, they can't even do the intellectual thing of describing this accurately. I mean, that's a huge empathy gap. Um, but more than that, I think, um, uh, f- finding, um, finding spiritual and other meaning in life that takes you outside of yourself and reattaches you to humanity and to eternity.

    9. NANarrator49:30

       That's going to be a challenge given how atomized our devices-

    10. NENicholas Eberstadt49:34

        Mm-hmm.

    11. NANarrator49:34

        ... have made us. You know?

    12. NENicholas Eberstadt49:35

        Mm-hmm.

    13. NANarrator49:35

        If you, even if you wanna go secular with this, right?

    14. NENicholas Eberstadt49:37

        Yeah.

    15. NANarrator49:37

        And you want to say, um, "Join a local pickleball club. Uh, pick up trash, look after the local dogs, you-"

    16. NENicholas Eberstadt49:45

        Mm-hmm.

    17. NANarrator49:45

        "... join an art class, do yoga, do whatever," right?

    18. NENicholas Eberstadt49:48

        Yep.

    19. NANarrator49:49

        For as long as you have a incredibly convenient, incredibly-

    20. NENicholas Eberstadt49:53

        Mm-hmm.

    21. NANarrator49:54

        ... distractable, uh, uh, highly distracting device that sits in your pocket, getting yourself up off the couch on an evening time is going to be hard. If you're spending 2,000 hours per year on the couch playing video games, smoking weed, it, th- there's a very high bar for you to get over there.

    22. NENicholas Eberstadt50:10

        Amen. Amen. And, uh, and I can't tell you what the next big innovation is, whether it's going to be a chip in the head or, uh, what the next, uh-

    23. NANarrator50:20

        Virtual reality or whatever it might be.

    24. NENicholas Eberstadt50:22

        Yeah. Yeah. A- and, well, virtual reality is already here, sure. I mean, just, it'll get better and, uh, and more, uh, more enticing. Um, it's g- it's going to have to, um, it's going to have to come from, uh, you know, from each, from people themselves. And it, uh, it can't, it may be a, it may be a revulsion, it may be a sad learning process, but, um, I- I don't, I don't have any doubt that, uh, th- that we won't, we won't entire- we will not entirely be enslaved by this. There'll be some sort of a reaction which will, I think, help to, uh, help to open people's minds again.

    25. NANarrator51:05

        Oddly, the revolution actually sounds like quite a good thing, although that's not usually what I would say. There's, uh, uh, one other element that I've been playing with for nearly a year now,

11. 51:16 – 54:16

    Are Men Being Sedated?

    1. NANarrator51:16

       which is given the highest ever rates of male sexlessness that we've seen-

    2. NENicholas Eberstadt51:20

       Mm-hmm.

    3. NANarrator51:20

       ... this sort of despondency in terms of the lack of work and meaning and so on and so forth, why hasn't young male syndrome kicked in? Why isn't it that guys are running around, setting cars on fire, and pushing over granny and graffitiing walls and stuff like that? Uh, and to me, it seems like the most obvious potential outlet is that they're being sedated by screens, porn, easy access to video games, social media, et cetera, et cetera. Um, that seems to be the most obvious one. And the problem that you have, it's like a, a perfect, um, marriage of what you've taught me today and what I already kind of knew, which is if you are part of a previously identified, uh, beneficiary of a system, the ability for the people now in charge of that system to give you sympathy and to try and raise you up is going to be so low. No one is going to come and say, "Why don't we spend more time raising up men, especially, you know, predominantly white, predominantly American men?" Uh, w- who's gonna come along and do that? It, it... There's no card carrying campaign, and it's the exact same people. You said it earlier on, they, they haven't galvanized themselves into one group that goes down the street with placards, waving things, and creating social media campaigns.

    4. NENicholas Eberstadt52:37

       I think it's going to be a spontaneous movement. Um, I think it's highly unlikely that something will be organized and developed, much less centrally, uh, centrally distributed from Washington. Um, on- but the proposition that something will generate spontaneously and spread like a prairie fire would not surprise me. B- so when people see something good, they want more of it.

    5. NANarrator53:10

       Just one final thing. What's the economic cost of this? What's the economic cost of, of this group-

    6. NENicholas Eberstadt53:15

       (clears throat)

    7. NANarrator53:15

       ... of people being outside of the workforce?

    8. NENicholas Eberstadt53:19

       Uh, well, it, it means, uh, it means slower, uh, slower economic growth for the country as a whole and it... But not just that. It means bigger income and wealth gaps. It means more welfare dependence. It probably means more public debt. It means you have to start doing the second order impact on fragile families, and the third order impact on what this means for trust in social institutions. Uh, I haven't tried to do, uh, you know, a whole of parts calculation on this, but it's, it's a big economic cost and it's an enormous moral cost to our society.

    9. NANarrator54:03

       Nicholas Eberstadt, ladies and gentlemen. Nicholas, I really, really enjoyed this. I think that this insight is one that much, much, much more people should be talking about. Uh, where can people go if they want to keep up to date with the work that you

12. 54:16 – 55:03

    Where to Find Nicholas

    1. NANarrator54:16

       do?

    2. NENicholas Eberstadt54:17

       Um, you can probably for, uh, for the foreseeable future use Saint Google to look for Nicholas Eberstadt. Uh, I've, I've got this book, uh, Men Without Work. You can probably find that, uh, somewhere. Uh, I have a, uh, I have a scholar's webpage at the American Enterprise Institute at AEI.org Nicholas Eberstadt.

    3. NANarrator54:40

       Nicholas, I appreciate you. Thank you for today.

    4. NENicholas Eberstadt54:42

       Hey, thank you for making the time for me.

    5. NANarrator54:44

       (Upbeat music) What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 55:03