As of June, a record number of 105 million American adults are NILF (Not In Labor Force), per the Federal Reserve.
“The record comes after a massive surge of 832,000 workers dropping out of the labor force in June alone. The overall number of NILFs is higher than at the height of the Great Recession or the COVID pandemic,” reports the New York Post. “Leading labor economist Nicholas Eberstadt told The Post that drilling down into the data reveals a startling pattern of dropouts, particularly among men.”
A NILF is defined as anyone over 16 not working. There is one catch: that number includes students and retirees. In fact, 50 percent of those 105 million are retirees, most of whom are older than 65.
Still, some 23.3 million NILFs are receiving benefits such as disability for long-term health issues.
“Very roughly speaking, there are about 7 million of these men who are out of the labor force for the 25-to 54-year-olds,” Eberstadt told the Post, adding that there is “a growing group of dropout women who are neither working nor looking for work, have no children under the same roof with them, and no husband present.”
He puts the number at 3.5 million females.
An aging population will, of course, increase this NILF number, especially now that the Boomers are retiring en masse. Eberstadt says this does not explain everything. Europe and Japan are aging while their workforce participation rates have increased.
He blames this on America’s “extent and the sprawl of participation or dependence upon different disability programs[.]” He added that there is no way to count the true number receiving disability due to the vast number of state and federal programs.
The looming AI revolution is expected to make things worse, especially among white-collar workers.
Eberstadt says the solution is a UBI (Universal Basic Income) guaranteed by the government. But then contradicts himself when he says NILF men are “not engaged in civil society, not helping out around the house, not getting out of the house. Spending 2,000 hours a year in front of a screen. That’s a great warm-up act for becoming a statistic in deaths of despair.”
Wouldn’t guaranteeing an income only increase this problem?
The best thing for everyone, but especially for men, is the feeling of accomplishment that comes with earning a living. You might hate your job. You might dread your job. But getting up in the morning to do something productive, even something you hate, is much better for the human spirit than lying around the house waiting for a monthly welfare check and DoorDash.
Like drugs and excessive alcohol, welfare (which is what UBI and disability are) corrodes the human spirit.
I’ve done jobs I dreaded, sometimes for years… Today, I look back on those years with pride. I did it. I provided. I contributed. The thought of spending those years in front of the TV collecting a government check would fill me with shame. Of course, the thought of sitting in front of the TV collecting a government check from the Social Security I earned fills me with nothing but excitement. I can’t wait to be a NILF. Is there a T-shirt?
Read the full article here