Men without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (2022)

By Nicholas Eberstadt

Nicholas Eberstadt’s landmark 2016 study, Men Without Work, cast a spotlight on the collapse of work for men in modern America. Rosy reports of low unemployment rates and “full or near full employment” conditions, he contends, were overlooking a quiet, continuing crisis: Depression-era work rates for American men of “prime working age” (25–54).
   The grim truth: over six million prime-age men were neither working nor looking for work. Conventional unemployment measures ignored these labor force dropouts, but their ranks had been rising relentlessly for half a century. Eberstadt’s unflinching analysis was, in the words of The New York Times, “an unsettling portrait not just of male unemployment, but also of lives deeply alienated from civil society.”
   The famed American work ethic was once near universal: men of sound mind and body took pride in contributing to their communities and families. No longer, warned Eberstadt. And now—six years and one catastrophic pandemic later—the problem has not only worsened: it has seemingly been spreading among prime-age women and workers over fifty-five.
   In a brand new introduction, Eberstadt explains how the government’s response to Covid-19 inadvertently exacerbated the flight from work in America. From indiscriminate pandemic shutdowns to almost unconditional “unemployment” benefits, Americans were essentially paid not to work.
   Thus today, despite the vaccine rollouts, inexplicable numbers of working age men and women are sitting on the sidelines while over 11 million jobs go unfilled. Current low rates of unemployment, touted by pundits and politicians, are grievously misleading. The truth is that fewer prime-age American men are looking for readily available work than at any previous juncture in our history. And others may be catching the “Men Without Work” virus too.
   Given the devastating economic impact of the Covid calamity and the unforeseen aftershocks yet to come, this reissue of Eberstadt’s groundbreaking work is timelier than ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Templeton Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781599475981

Nicholas Eberstadt

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI, where he researches and writes extensively on demographics, economic development, and international security in the Korean Peninsula and Asia. Domestically, he focuses on poverty and social well-being. Mr. Eberstadt is also a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research. His many books and monographs include Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis (2016); A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic (2012); Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications (2010); and The Poverty of “the Poverty Rate”: Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America (2008). He has offered invited testimony before the US Congress on numerous occasions and has served as consultant or adviser for a wide variety of units in the US government. In 2012, Mr. Eberstadt was awarded the prestigious Bradley Prize, and he delivered the Irving Kristol Lecture in 2020. He earned a bachelor of arts from Harvard University, a master of science from the London School of Economics, a master of public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

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