Understanding the Decline in Male Employment

Male labor force participation in the United States has been declining in recent decades, primarily driven by significant drops in employment among men without a college education. Prior research has largely attributed this trend to the decline of manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs, as well as the limited availability of jobs that do not require reskilling. However, employment rates for other non-college-educated demographic groups (e.g., women and foreign-born men) have not experienced similar declines, suggesting that a lack of available jobs may not fully explain these trends. In this project, we will explore the reasons behind the detachment of less-educated men from the labor force, with a particular focus on the roles of reservation wages and skill mismatch. The research supported by the proposed grant will leverage newly collected survey data in addition to existing data on job postings from Indeed, one of the largest job hiring platforms in the United States.