Episode

Why have 7 million men dropped out of the labor force?

Podcast
The Banker Next Door
Published
Jun 5, 2026
Duration seconds
1225
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://joeberq.podbean.com/e/why-have-7-million-men-dropped-out-of-the-labor-force/
Audio
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hbg5s67a29ijhfuf/Why_have_7_million_men_dropped_out_of_the_labor_force9ndz6.mp3
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/the-banker-next-door-6597036/episodes/why-have-7-million-men-dropped-out-of-the-labor-force
Markdown
/podcast/the-banker-next-door-6597036/why-have-7-million-men-dropped-out-of-the-labor-force.md

Actions

  • POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-banker-next-door-6597036/episodes/why-have-7-million-men-dropped-out-of-the-labor-force/transcription-requests
    Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
  • GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-banker-next-door-6597036/why-have-7-million-men-dropped-out-of-the-labor-force.md
    Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

Summary

The Department of Labor recently reported that the labor force participation rate for prime age men (age 25 to 54) dropped to 66%! About 1/3rd of men or approximately 7 million have dropped out of the labor force all together. This is a shocking statistic. There is no doubt that the country, overtime, will feel the absence of these men in a very profound way. The big question right now is how did this happen? There is not one single issue or event but a compounding of changes over many decades that led to this point. The loss of America’s manufacturing base in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the belief that College was going to be the magic job elixir, the dotcom bubble, the great recession, the rise of wokeness and DEI, COVID, and H1-B visas all conspired to play a part in making this happen. How can we fix this? How do we turn this around? This episode reviews an article from The Epoch Times (subscription required) titled “Where have the men gone?”