Young Men Are Abandoning the Workforce

Article here. Excerpt:

'After decades of efforts to bolster women’s role in the workforce, the male-female labor gap has now officially closed. By one measure, it has reversed.

American women now hold 176,000 more payroll jobs than American men, according to July data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at Indeed. That disparity has nearly doubled since February. Compare it to the 1990s, when men held nearly seven million more jobs than women. It’s not that women are filling roles that would have gone to men. Rather, men have been leaving the labor market in droves.

Ms. Ullrich calculates that all of U.S. job growth since last July has been for female employees, partially because tech and financial services jobs that are predominately held by men declined over the past year. Women have outperformed men in the workforce twice before in recent history, briefly during the economic contractions of the Great Recession and just before Covid. But Ms. Ullrich says the difference this time is that the trend isn’t driven by a recession and it isn’t likely to reverse anytime soon.'