The missing men of America

Inspired from 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-missing-men/488858/

Around 7-8 million males in the USA have completely dropped out of the workforce over the past 59 years and don’t even want a job — 

Where are they? 

Prison? 

Disability? 

In school?

Stay at home dads ?

None of the above!!!

Research says they do nothing but hang around, socialise and watch TV. 

This is not a good thing!!!!

Where did the jobs go? 

Manufacturing and construction - In 1954, the highwater mark for male participation, the manufacturing and construction sectors accounted for nearly 40 percent of all jobs. Now, after the long decline of manufacturing and the end of the housing bubble, they account for just 13 percent. 

These are jobs that men without a college degree can count on, and they're much rarer than they used to be. The White House report notes that "when the share of state employment attributable to construction, mining and to a lesser extent manufacturing are higher, more prime-age men participate in the labor force.” In other words, men are more likely to work in areas where the state directly subsidizes employment in male-heavy occupations.

There are four occupations expected to add more than 100,000 jobs in the next decade: personal care aides, home health aides, medical secretaries, and marketing specialists -( but these are more female dominated)

Perhaps the United States needs some sort of massive national building project to put these men back to work in jobs that they would be proud and willing to do

Several weeks ago, Conor Sen, a portfolio manager and a columnist at Bloomberg View, wrote a widely shared essay predicting that housing would become the dominant economic story of the next five years.

The problem - construction needs to be made in metro and high growth areas ..... And unemployed men are in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, and the Deep South, where the rate of non-working men often hovers around 40 percent.

The challenge - how to get these unemployed men to move to areas which need construction?  ....... 

And even more challenging .... How can we upskill these humans? Maybe through a programme of lifelong learning . If they are watching tv, how can we pique their interest and upskill them?