Classifieds

Commentary
Work and family are inextricably linked. Both are in deep trouble.
COVID and the policy response to it—lockdowns and large stimulus payments—reduced the workforce. It raised the income and savings of those economically in the lower half of society. It increased the mismatch between the supply of workers and employers’ demand for them.
Well before the pandemic, however, Nicholas Eberstadt shows in his 2016 book “Men Without Work,” there was a Depression-level rate of men without jobs, even with plenty of positions available. These “un-workers,” men of prime working age 25 to 54, were not unemployed, as in looking for work but failing to find it. They were neither in employment nor education or training. They spent the equivalent of a full-time, year-round job, not helping with childcare or housework or being active in civic associations or churches, but in looking at screens. (Researchers did not ask what they were looking at.)...