In a previous blog, The Buckeye Institute asked “Has Ohio lost its labor force edge?” In it, author Thomas Kilbane found:

Since the Great Recession, disability claims have skyrocketed, and unfortunately Ohio has outpaced the national average in this category. The worst news is that unlike school enrollees, people claiming disability insurance rarely return to the labor force. Between 2006 and 2012, Ohio’s population aged 18-64 saw almost no change, but in 2012 there were over 93,000 more disabled beneficiaries within that age range.

This is consistent with a sobering new examination of the collapse of working rates among American men, as outlined by the American Enterprise Institute’s Nicholas Eberstadt in a recent Wall Street Journal article. The piece should be mandatory reading for those concerned about the future economic health of the country and Ohio. 

Unfortunately, this slow-moving catastrophe is rarely discussed.

Eberstadt comments,

In 2015 the work rate (the ratio of employment to population) for American males age 25 to 54 was 84.4%. That’s slightly lower than it had been in 1940, 86.4%, at the tail end of the Great Depression. Benchmarked against 1965, when American men were at genuine full employment, the “male jobs deficit” in 2015 would be nearly 10 million, even after taking into account an older population and more adults in college.

It is important to understand what this means. Here, Eberstadt pulls no punches:

Declining labor-force participation and falling work rates have contributed to slower economic growth and widening gaps in income and wealth. Slower growth in turn reduces tax revenue and increases budgetary pressures, producing higher deficits and national debt. Unworking men have increased poverty in the U.S., not least among the great many children whose fathers are without jobs.

There are the social effects, too. The male retreat from the labor force has exacerbated family breakdown, promoted welfare dependence and recast “disability” into a viable alternative lifestyle.

Free-market policies can reverse those trends and turbocharge the growth of jobs in Ohio and across the country. So too can education reforms result in better outcomes and prepare graduates for new jobs. Reforming welfare to eliminate present disincentives to work also can inspire men, and others, to get to work and earn a quality income. 

Continued failure in these areas will condemn literally millions of Americans to a life of poverty and idleness. At current count, according to Eberstadt, that’s around 10 million men. But surely there are more men, and women, in Ohio and elsewhere whose skills, talents, and passions are hidden from the communities that desperately need them.