The life trajectories of America's sons and daughters are diverging.
Presented with a more-equal playing field, young women are seizing the opportunities in front of them, while young men are floundering. The phenomenon has developed over the past decade, but was supercharged by the pandemic, which derailed careers, schooling and isolated friends and families. The result has big implications for the economy.
More women ages 25 to 34 have entered the workforce in recent years than ever. The share of young men in the labor market, meanwhile, hasn't grown in a decade.
As of August, 89% of this cohort of men were employed or looking for work, more than 700,000 fewer than if the current labor-force participation rate was at 2004 levels, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Aspen Economic Strategy Group policy director Luke Pardue. Women's participation is up 6 percentage points in just the past 10 years, to 79%. A fifth of men in this same age range still lived with their parents as of 2023, according to the Census, compared with 12% of women.
Among non caregivers who aren't disabled, men are more likely to be neither employed, in school nor in workforce training, what economists refer to as NEET. Around 260,000 more 16- to 29-year-old men than women fell into this category as of the first half of 2024, according to think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research, representing 8.6% of young men and 7.8% of young women. Rates are up for both groups since 2019, but down from a Covid high.
Until the past decade or so, "there was an assumption that men just needed to show up for their life and they'll get a job and have a family and be provided for, because they're men," says University of Maryland masculinity research Kevin M. Roy.
That is no longer true. While women now expect to have more and better opportunities than their mothers and grandmothers, men are in some ways bracing for the opposite. Researchers say that has created a crisis of purpose, especially for men at the entrance to adulthood.
Roy and other social scientists cite shifts away from traditional gender roles and single-earner family structures, as well as declines in traditionally male-dominated industries such as manufacturing.
"The sense a lot of young men have is not being sure that they are needed or that they are going to be needed by their families, by their communities, by society," says Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, a nonpartisan research organization.
One of the first clues popped up a few years ago, When educators began sounding the alarm on high-school boys' plummeting college-attendance rates. Now that this cohort is in their 20s, their feelings of aimlessness are spilling into the social and professional realms.
Young men are lonelier as a result. Those yes 18 to 30 spent 18% more time alone last year-an average of 6.6 nonsleeping hours-than in 2019, according to Pardue's analysis of American Time Use Survey data. That is 22% more alone time than reported by women in the same age range.
"The more that you're sitting on the couch as opposed to out in the world, your social network gets narrower and then you don't have the social capital or the skills to step into a job," says Gary Barker, the director of Equimundo, a progressive gender-equality advocacy organization.
"The more that you're sitting on the couch as opposed to out in the world, your social network gets narrower and then you don't have the social capital or the skills to step into a job," says Gary Barker, the director of Equimundo, a progressive gender-equality advocacy organization.
Nearly two-thirds of the 18- to 30-year-old men Equimundo polled last year said that nobody knew them well. A quarter said they hadn't seen anyone outside their home in the past week.
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