‘Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis’

An Even Greater Depression Cometh

• #1)  Our open borders political parties are flooding America with millions of newly imported legal and illegal workers in order to drive down wages for Wall Street.
• #2)  Meanwhile countless millions of jobs are being abolished by robotics. the Internet and "free trade" agreements.
• The bottom line - hidden unemployment is increasing and wages are falling. At some point the consumer economy will collapse as people with jobs to buy products simply vanish.

(Washington Free Beacon)  -  Probably since time immemorial, each generation has thought the next one lacked industriousness. But for the last half-century, this belief has been true of American men. Even as the economy has grown, a rising share of prime-age males have opted out of work.

Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis, a brief book by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, drives this point home forcefully, drawing on an impressive array of data to explain what’s happening and why.

The chart that forms the core of Eberstadt’s case depicts the percentage of men age 25-54 who do not have a job:

Percent of males without a job

The ups and downs of the economy obviously matter; more men stop working during recessions. But for half a century, there’s been a trend of increasing joblessness, as is especially obvious from the bars depicting decade-long averages. This trend does not go away when Eberstadt adjusts the data to account for things like rising college enrollment and an aging population.

Men who aren’t even looking for jobs are driving a lot of the trend. To judge from various surveys, these men fill their days with mindless leisure, sometimes including drugs. They are actually less socially engaged than men with jobs, with lower rates of church attendance and volunteering. In fairness, non-working men do spend about 30 minutes more each day on housework than working men, which puts them roughly on par with employed women.

Why is this happening? Eberstadt offers a number of explanations, some more controversial than others.

One obvious factor is that the economy has changed in ways that make life harder for low-skilled men, the group that has experienced the most pronounced drop-off in employment. We can argue about how much to blame immigration, trade, or technology for the shift, but the bottom line is that the days of easily available, decent-paying factory jobs for men with little education are over. This isn’t a full explanation—for instance, low-skilled immigrants don’t seem to have trouble finding jobs—but it’s a big one.

Another factor may be the rise of mass incarceration, though as Eberstadt notes, any policy change in this area must be made with an eye toward preserving public safety. Only about one-half of one percent of the American population is imprisoned at any given time, but that’s still five times the rate of the 1960s. Additionally, most prison sentences are short, meaning that while the “stock” of prisoners is low relative to the size of the total population, the “flow” of prisoners is substantial. During the course of their lives, many men enter the system and then return to society with criminal records.

Read More . . . .

'I can't find a job because I 

don't speak Spanish'

.

• I see it in want ad after want ad: "Bilingual" preferred. Translation: English speaking American citizens of African and European heritage need not apply.

(London Daily Mail)  -  A white middle class Alabama woman says she has been rejected by prospective employers because she doesn't speak Spanish.  

Sandra Langlois, a native of Albertville, Alabama, told CNN the changing demographics brought on by illegal immigration has left working class whites like herself struggling to find gainful employment.

Langlois, a 42-year-old woman who as a child immigrated to the United States legally from Germany, said: 'It's kind of, really, discrimination. If you're not here legally, then you need to go ahead and go back home... They need to come over here the right way. Don't sneak over. Don't stay here.'

The influx of immigrants - both legal and illegal - has made it harder for native-born Americans who don't speak Spanish to find jobs in areas of the country that have grown more ethnically diverse in recent years. 

Albertville is a town that reflects the demographic changes that are having a major economic impact in wide swaths of the country.

Its population numbers 21,462 – with 30 per cent of those Hispanic. Nearly 3,800 locals were born outside the US.   (More)