The unemployment rate is spoken of quite a lot; but no one seems to talk about the employment rate….
Note in the same period(1948-2008) the total population “Labor Force Participation Rate” increased from 57% to 66%. And 82% of the workers who have lost their jobs since December 2007 are male.
US Male employment rate 1948-2008
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics
Labor Force Participation Rate - Men 20 yrs. & over
Because they are more highly paid, no doubt. The more expensive employees tend to be let go first, or encouraged to retire early in some fields.
Personally, I think the loss of men’s jobs is a disaster in many ways. Because men so often identify themselves with their work, the rates of depression among men probably rise (don’t have stats on this right now). Families with two incomes are forced to rely on the smaller income when a man loses his job, and the man sees his place of leadership in the family seem to decline.
Fortunately for Kinists, when Kinist males lose their jobs they have agrarian pursuits to turn to; while not a perfect substitute when one is forced out of work, it’s still better than some who have only the TV and the pile o’resumés.
Indeed. Thanks for the links to other times we have discussed similar topics.
As I said above, agrarian pursuits, even something as simple as gardening (in containers—even as basic as free plastic containers from ice cream shops—on balconies, if necessary) is helpful to survival, and to the soul.
Some links for frugal gardening tips—obviously, I can’t say these are Kinist blogs, but the info is useful.
There are many more links out there to frugal gardening tips. I guess the most important thing is to think creatively about where you can get the things you need for free (waste from businesses, like the coffee grounds from Starbucks tip) or cheap.
Gotta love the internet. If I get really broke (still have a job, thank heavens), my broadband internet will be the last luxury to go.
Personally, I think the loss of men’s jobs is a disaster in many ways. Because men so often identify themselves with their work, the rates of depression among men probably rise (don’t have stats on this right now). Families with two incomes are forced to rely on the smaller income when a man loses his job, and the man sees his place of leadership in the family seem to decline.
Susan Faludi, feminist and Jew, actually wrote an insightful book on the very subject called, Stiffed: The Betrayl of the American Man that is an enjoyable read.
“It’s almost like a snow globe, the economy’s been turned over and we’re watching it settle in different ways,” said Gary Field, founder of Career Gear, a non-profit organisation that helps low-income men apply for jobs. He has seen referrals rise 35 per cent.
Men have been disproportionately hurt because they dominate those industries that have been crushed: nine in every 10 construction workers are male, as are seven in every 10 manufacturing workers. These two sectors alone have lost almost 2.5m jobs. Women, in contrast, tend to hold more cyclically stable jobs and make up 75 per cent of the most insulated sectors of all: education and healthcare.
Thanks for the links, laurel. Since our rural neighborhood has been discussing the coming census, with info being gathered on all gardens and animals (confiscation of those who “hide their stuff” or don’t disclose), that Room Farm looks good….
And we ask ourselves and each other strange new questions like, “How much asparagus can you grow behind the abandoned tractor in those weeds?” We are hoping for the usual ever-incompetent government worker to show up in OUR neighborhood…
Woohee, sounds like a bad year for genealogy buffs…I can see the Ancestry.com entry for the 2010 census:
“Widely considered unreliable due to extensive boycotts and falsification of information to avoid government grabs for possessions, the 2010 census is the least trustworthy for those Ancestry subscribers seeking early 21st century relatives.”
...in 1954, about 96 percent of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today that number is around 80 percent. One-fifth of all men in their prime working ages are not getting up and going to work.
And employment rate for men under 30 and over 50 is even lower.
While some of these economic outcomes result purely from supply/demand logic, the war on males is not accidental I’m afraid. Consider just this one aspect of that war:
Males tend to be more political and more ideological. The destruction of the authority of the male (and non-governmental authority in general) tends to neutralize or destroy the sources of training in ideology and political activity in the household. In single-parent homes (usually female-led), often this form of training is entirely absent, such that children grow up without worldview orientation. In the absence of a worldview supplied by a male head of household, secular society provides a worldview for their elite, and reduces all others to the possession of disconnected and dis-integrated data. That is, the synthesis of data into information, into knowledge, into worldview, into wisdom is simply not occurring for vast populations in the West.
This is resulting both from the sheer absence of males as social influences, as well as the continued diminishing of their role when they are present.
Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.1
