Is It True That Working-Aged Men Just, Um, Stopped Working?
Not really.
You see stats like the above all the time, about middle-aged and older men fleeing the labor force. Here’s a new version of that same story. While it’s definitely true that some men have fled the labor force, you get into that link and you see this:
About 87 percent of men ages 35 to 44 were working as of October, down from 88.3 percent before the pandemic struck in 2020.
That’s not a huge drop, so I don’t think we can go and blame COVID immediately or anything.
A bit further down, there’s this:
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