Americas male employment crisis is both urban and rural

[milestogo]

Alan Berube
Monday, December 5, 2016

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, many analysts have interpreted Donald Trump’s victory as the product of economic anxiety among the white working class—particularly in the smaller towns and rural areas that provided his electoral margin in closely contested states like North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

This piece does not purport to explain why people voted the way they did, or what role economic factors played in their decisions. Rather, it acknowledges that the state of the economy in small-town and rural America highlighted throughout the campaign and after the election surely deserves attention. Economists such as David Autor have chronicled how increasing Chinese imports over the past two decades produced long-term economic dislocation in many of these communities. Anne Case and Angus Deaton uncovered alarming evidence that mortality rates have risen among white Americans with lower levels of education, paralleling a rapid increase in drug overdoses largely concentrated in non-urban areas.

Central to these discussions is the availability of work in such communities, particularly for men who have borne the brunt of manufacturing job losses. Research from President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers highlighted the trends and factors underlying the decline in labor force participation among prime-aged men (ages 25–54). Earlier this year, I examined the metropolitan geography of non-working, prime-aged men, finding that smaller industrial centers in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio exhibited low rates of male employment, as did mining centers in West Virginia and Louisiana, and agricultural centers in Arkansas, Texas, and inland California.

While the focus on metropolitan areas illustrates important regional patterns relating to economic function and migration, it may obscure important differences in employment within metro areas, while also overlooking the non-metropolitan communities on which economists have focused increasing attention. By examining the full range of U.S. community types, this analysis shows that cities and smaller communities ultimately have a shared interest in improving access to employment opportunities for prime-aged workers.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/americas-male-employment-crisis-is-both-urban-and-rural/

This is an interesting article and speaks to the issue of why Trump carried white males.

[Warpy]

1. What people need to understand also is that they don't expect Rump to fix anything

They voted for him because they want him to wreck what's already there.

The Democratic Party completely misread the mood of the US electorate.

Yes, Clinton won the popular vote by 2.7 million votes. She just didn't win places like the Rust Belt and she needed to.

[milestogo]

2. I don't think Trump can fix the unemployment crisis among prime age men

who are not college educated. On the other hand, I am not sure how it can be fixed by any president without seriously addressing education issues. If all the service jobs are declining and manufacturing jobs are not coming back - these men need to enter more traditionally female occupations or get some other kind of retraining. But education isn't free.

[Warpy]

3. None of your solutions will work

so it's good nobody expects you to fix anything, either. The point is that they expect Trump to wreck things, not fix them.

Education isn't a panacea, many of the unemployed white males in their prime are educated, some right out of college in fields that are still seeing hiring. So they're stuck with enough education to know they've gotten screwed without being kissed plus the burden of loans they had to take out to get there.

Put on your thinking cap and think about what else has happened in this country in the last 40+ years.

[Red Oak]

4. The way to bring back jobs is to manage trade. Actively manage the trade balance between nations.

We've done it before over our history and we can, and should, do it again.

The reason we choose NOT to manage trade is that if you are the owner or executive management of a business you can make a shit load of money by offshoring with low or zero tariffs to get your product back into the USA. Who wouldn't want to pay peanuts to get a product built in China with no EPA regulations, no consumer protection agency, no healthcare costs, no major social security. It's a huge boon to business profits to screw the American worker. Hell, we even offer tax incentives to offshore!

This system works well (for the 1%) until the point is reached that so much money is drained from the customer base, due to un- and under-employment, that said 1%-ers can no longer sell much product to the poverty stricken customer base. Then the system collapses. Until the collapse though, it's party time!

If we manage trade, yes the prices at Walmart and other big box stores will go up. Yes, some jobs will lost to automation upon their return to the USA. However, there are still many, many millions (MILLIONS!) of jobs in China and Mexico that would flood back into the USA if we managed trade. Imagine all the products that were made in the USA that are now made in China, by people, not machines. Those jobs would be headed back home to help America if our politicians weren't so bought and paid for with campaign donations and the revolving door of Washington D.C.