Must-Read: Isabel Sawhill: Where Have All the Workers Gone?

Must-Read: Isabel Sawhill: Where Have All the Workers Gone?: “Real wages have fallen by 28 percent for high-school educated men since 1980…

…making work much less attractive, but also signaling that employers are looking for a higher level of skill…. Disability rolls have been growing (primarily because of musculoskeletal and mental health issues)… [which] create[s] a disincentive to re-enter…. Now that women are almost half the labor force, the pressure for men to work has lessened. In the shorter run, it’s hard to tell how much of the recent sharp drop in employment is related to weak demand and how much to these longer-term factors…. A rather large group may simply be unemployable at an attractive wage and may have figured out how to get by without working very much….