[otoburb]

You have to go back more years to see the trendline. BLS has a different chart showing the male participation rate dropping while female participation rate has remained fairly constant over the past decade.[1]

By my rough estimation that's ~7M men unaccounted for by simply not participating in the 'traditional' labour force. Keep in mind that it could also 'simply' be that a lot of those unaccounted men are working but in ways that the government(s) at different levels are unable to reliably track.

There have been some articles and attention picking up on this trend over the past few years.[2]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

[2] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/educatio...

[__turbobrew__]

[2] is an interesting article, but it doesn’t go into why male participation rates are going down more than female rates, outside of the fact that men are much more likely to be convicted of felonies which makes work prospects worse.

Anecdotally what I have seen most in men are the shut in NEETs who live with their parents and/or collect disability and play video games all day. Why this is uniquely a phenomenon for men is unclear to me, but on the other side I know of lots of trophy wives who just go to yoga class and salons all day and do not produce economic value, and they are not put under the same microscope as NEETs.