Men

If you are unemployed for an extended period of time, people are going to look at you differently. Unfortunately, this is especially true if you are a man. In our society, men are primarily defined by “what they do”. If you have been unemployed for a long period of time, that can make social interactions even more awkward than normal. Most people will instantly become more uncomfortable around you when they find out that you are unemployed. Many will look at you with pity, and others will actually look at you with disdain. Women will not want to date you, and if you are in a relationship unemployment will put a tremendous amount of strain on it. Once you “don’t have a job”, you will not get the same level of respect from former co-workers, friends, members of your own family and possibly even your own wife. So why does our society look down on unemployed men so much? Well, it is generally expected that men are supposed to be the “breadwinners” for their families. If a woman stays home with the kids nobody has any problems with that, but if men do the same thing it tends to raise eyebrows. But there is a big problem. Our economy is not producing enough jobs for everyone. In fact, there are millions upon millions more workers than there are jobs. It would be great if this was just a temporary situation, but as I have written about previously, there will never be enough jobs in America ever again. So there will continually be millions upon millions of men that are looked down upon by society because they can’t get jobs, and as a result we are going to have millions upon millions of men that are constantly battling against soul-crushing despair.

It can be really hard to “feel like a man” when you aren’t making any money.

And most women simply are not interested in becoming romantically involved with an unemployed man. Just check out what one recent survey found….

Of the 925 single women surveyed, 75 percent said they’d have a problem with dating someone without a job. Only 4 percent of respondents asked whether they would go out with an unemployed man answered “of course.”

“Not having a job will definitely make it harder for men to date someone they don’t already know,” Irene LaCota, a spokesperson for It’s Just Lunch, said in a press release. “This is the rare area, compared to other topics we’ve done surveys on, where women’s old-fashioned beliefs about sex roles seem to apply.”

Those are some pretty overwhelming numbers.

So is it the same way when the roles are reversed?

Not even close.

When men were asked the same question, the difference was absolutely shocking….

On the other hand, the prospect of dating an unemployed woman was not a problem for nearly two-thirds of men. In fact, 19 percent of men said they had no reservations and 46 percent of men said they were positive they would date an unemployed woman.

Admittedly, men are often thinking about other things when they are evaluating whether they want to date a women or not. Yes, there are some men these days that are concerned about how much money a woman makes, but the truth is that men tend to be much less concerned about income levels than women are.

In fact, a UK study that was released last year discovered that British women are even more concerned about the education and income of a potential mate than they were back in the 1940s.

So if you are unemployed you are probably not going to find much success in the romance department either.

If you are married, being unemployed is likely to put a huge strain on your marriage. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Business Insider article entitled “TRUE CONFESSION: I’m Sick Of My Unemployed Husband“….

I can’t even remember when my husband stopped working.

And frankly, I don’t have time to think about it, between my full-time job and my fledgling business, volunteering at an after-school program to help teenagers prepare for the professional world and mothering two children.

But when I do think about it–when I think about all the times I come home to see evidence of his entire day’s activities cluttering the coffee table, or when I have to take our shared car to work and strand him at home because he doesn’t feel like getting up to drive me–I’m angry.

If a husband is unemployed for an extended period of time, there is a very good chance that the wife is going to start feeling very resentful.

If things get bad enough, many women will pull the plug on their marriages and will get rid of their “unproductive” husbands.

Last year, Time Magazine reported on a study that indicated that unemployed men were significantly more likely to get divorced than employed men were.

My goal in writing this is not to “bash women”. I am just pointing out how hard things are for unemployed men in our society. Many wives (and their extended families) simply do not understand that our economy has fundamentally changed. In the old days just about any hard working man that wanted a job could go out and get one. That is most definitely NOT the case today.

Hopefully we can get more women to understand this. I know that it can be hard to be patient when your husband is unemployed for month after month after month.

But at a time when husbands need their support the most, many wives withdraw emotionally and become very angry.

For example, how many women have you ever heard declare how proud they are of their unemployed husbands?

Of course there are definitely situations where these roles are reversed and employed husbands are badgering their unemployed wives about getting a job, but in general our society tends to have a greater degree of tolerance for unemployed women than it does for unemployed men.

Sadly, most people simply do not understand how dramatically things have changed in our economy.

The following chart shows the stunning decline in the percentage of working age men with a job over the past 60 years….

Back in the 1950s, there were times when nearly 85 percent of all working age men had jobs.

We will never get back to anything close to that ever again.

Prior to the last recession, about 70 percent of all working age men were employed.

Since the end of the recession, that number has not gotten back to 65 percent at any point.

That means somewhere around 5 percent of all working age American men have been displaced from the workforce permanently.

The mainstream media would have us believe that we are experiencing an “economic recovery” but that is a massive lie. The real unemployment numbers are much worse than we have been told.

If you take a look at all working age Americans (men and women), there are actually more than 100 million of them that do not have jobs right now.

I know that statistic can be hard to believe. I had a hard time believing it at first. But it is actually true.

Meanwhile, the incomes of those who are working continue to fall. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for four years in a row.

But this is not a trend that just started recently. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline and it is time for all of us to admit how bad things have really gotten.

So what are all of the men who are not working doing these days?

Well, there are some that have chosen to stay at home with the kids. In a previous article, I discussed how the number of “stay at home dads” has doubled over the past decade.

But the overall percentage of “Mr. Moms” is still very, very low according to Fox News….

There were only about 81,000 Mr. Moms in 2001, or about 1.6 percent of all stay-at-home parents. By last year, the number had climbed to 176,000, or 3.4 percent of stay-at-home parents, according to U.S. Census data.

The vast majority of working age men still want to work outside of the home and earn a living for their families.

Unfortunately, most families need more than one income to make it these days. In fact, in many cases both parents are working multiple jobs in an attempt to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, the number of good jobs continues to decline and the middle class in America continues to shrink.

This is hitting our young people that are just starting out particularly hard. For example, during 2011 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

And as I have written about previously, this is resulting in huge numbers of our young people moving back home with Mom and Dad.

This is particularly true when it comes to young men. According to CNN, American men in the 25 to 34 age bracket are nearly twice as likely to live with their parents as women the same age are….

The number of adult children who live with their parents, especially young males, has soared since the economy started heading south. Among males age 25 to 34, 19% live with their parents today, a 5 percentage point increase from 2005, according to Census data released Thursday. Meanwhile, 10% of women in that age group live at home, up from 8% six years ago.

How are our young men going to be able to get married and start families if they can’t find jobs and they are living in our basements?

Sadly, things are really hard for everyone right now. Since June 2009, we have supposedly been in “the Obama recovery”, but median household income in America has fallen during that time period by $3040.

People keep waiting for things to “get better”, but it just isn’t happening. This was beautifully illustrated the other night during a Saturday Night Live skit that had “Barack Obama” speaking in front of a rally of unemployed and underemployed workers. You can find video of that skit right here.

There are millions upon millions of men (and women) all over America that are ready and willing to go back to work.

Sadly, there will never be enough jobs for all of them ever again, and that is not going to change no matter who wins the election.

In fact, when the next wave of the economic collapse hits the United States it is likely that unemployment is going to get a whole lot worse.

What will our society look like when that happens?

This economic decline has been really hard on everyone, but it has been particularly hard on American men. During the last recession male employment dropped like a rock and it has not recovered much at all since then. That is why many referred to the last recession as a “mancession”. Industries where men are disproportionately represented such as construction and manufacturing have really been hit hard in recent years. In the old days, you could take a high school education down to the local factory and get a job that would enable you to live a middle class lifestyle and support a growing family on just that one income. Sadly, those days are long gone. Today, American men live in a world where their labor is not really needed. Wages are falling because almost any worker can be easily replaced by the vast pool of unemployed American workers that are currently searching for work, and a lot of big companies are shifting labor-intensive jobs overseas where workers only make a small fraction of what they make in the United States. American workers (especially those without much education) are considered to be expensive liabilities in a world where labor has become a global commodity. So the percentage of working age American men that have jobs is likely to continue to decline and wages are likely to continue to stagnate as well.

For many men, a long-term bout with unemployment can almost be worse than a major illness. It can be really hard to feel like a man when you don’t have a job. Men often see themselves as filling the “provider” role, and when they aren’t providing for their families self-esteem can fall through the floor. It is easy to feel worthless when there is no money coming in and your wife and your kids are looking at you with worry every single day.

As you read this, there are millions upon millions of unemployed men sitting at home with a glazed look in their eyes. When you talk with these men, many of them seem as though the life has been sucked right out of them.

As I wrote about recently, when you cannot find a job month after month after month people start to look at you differently. Some start to look at you with pity in their eyes, and others start to look at you with disgust in their eyes.

Most Americans don’t really understand how much the economy has fundamentally changed, and many of them still believe that it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a job in “the greatest economy on earth”.

But things have changed. If you don’t have a college education or some highly specialized skills then it is going to be exceedingly difficult to get a good paying job in this economy.

Unfortunately, finding a job is not going to be getting any easier. Times are hard now, but they are going to be getting a lot harder.

The following are 16 signs that this economic decline is sucking the life out of the American male….

#1 During the last recession, men lost twice as many jobs as women did.

#2 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the “real entry-level hourly wage for men who recently graduated from high school” has declined from $15.64 in 1979 to $11.68 last year.

#3 During the recent economic downturn millions of men saw their family finances get absolutely destroyed. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families in the United States declined “from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010“.

#4 As you can see from the chart below, in the 1950s there were times when nearly 85 percent of all working age men had a job. Sadly, that number has stayed below 65 percent since the end of the last recession….

#5 More unemployed fathers than ever are staying at home with the kids. Over the past decade the number of “stay at home dads” has doubled.

#6 Prior to the recession, women accounted for approximately 45 percent of the workforce. Now, they account for 49.4 percent of the workforce.

#7 According to one new survey, 23 percent of all small business owners in America have gone for more than a year without pay. More than half of all small business owners are men.

#8 The decline in manufacturing jobs has had a disproportionate impact on men. Back in 1940, 23.4% of all American workers had manufacturing jobs. Today, only 10.4% of all American workers have manufacturing jobs.

#9 More than half of all middle management jobs in America are now held by women.

#10 More than half of all health care jobs in America are now held by women.

#11 American men love to watch television. But because of harsh economic conditions more families than ever are eliminating cable television service. According to one survey, a whopping 6.9 million American homes cancelled cable service last year.

#12 According to the New York Times, approximately 57 percent of all Americans that are currently enrolled in college are women.

#13 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#14 According to another study, “young, urban, childless women” make more money in America today than young, urban, childless men do.

#15 According to CNN, in the United States today men in the 25 to 34 age bracket are nearly twice as likely to live with their parents as women the same age are….

The number of adult children who live with their parents, especially young males, has soared since the economy started heading south. Among males age 25 to 34, 19% live with their parents today, a 5 percentage point increase from 2005, according to Census data released Thursday. Meanwhile, 10% of women in that age group live at home, up from 8% six years ago.

#16 Our system often treats elderly American men like absolute trash. Just check out what happened to one elderly veteran up in Montana recently….

Warren C. Bodeker is an 89 year old World War II Army Airborne combat veteran and war hero, living in Montana, who is being thrown off of his own land and thrown out of his own house, by Montana Federal Bankruptcy Trustee, Christy Brandon, with the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Montana. And to make matters worse, Warren’s wife Lorna just died of cancer this past year, and is buried there on their land, right next to the house. Warren had planned to live there till he died and then be buried right next to his wife, there on their property at 11 Freedom Lane, in the town of Plains, Montana, but now, not only is he being forced off his land, he is being forced to exhume his wife’s body and take her with him.

As the ability of men (and women) to take care of their families continues to decline, the middle class continues to shrink rapidly.

Most Americans continue to expect our economy to be able to bounce back to where it was before, but the truth is that the U.S. economy is in the midst of a long-term decline.

We are heading for an absolute economic nightmare, and we desperately need to come together as a nation and find some real solutions.

Unfortunately, our nation is becoming more divided than ever, and most of our politicians are proposing that we continue to do the exact same things that got us into this mess.

So what do all of you think about “the mancession” and what this economic decline is doing to the American male? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

Why Does Our Society Look Down On Unemployed Men So Much?

The Mancession: 16 Signs That This Economic Decline Is Sucking The Life Out Of The American Male