TV host Mike Rowe concerned about number of men not working

The nation is facing a crisis of men who not only don’t work but are not seeking jobs, television host Mike Rowe told Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Seven million able-bodied men between the ages of 25 and 40 are not participating in the labor force. “That’s never happened in peacetime — ever,” he said.

The “How Things Work” host highlighted economist Nick Eberstadt’s work, which looks at the labor market post-COVID-19 and why employers are having trouble getting people to re-enter the workforce.

“Economists like Nick Eberstadt take a dim view of it — they’re worried, and they’re trying to inject that into the conversation at a time when we’re still looking at the unemployment number as the true harbinger of what’s really going on,” Rowe said. “We’re looking at the wrong thing. We’re looking at not what it means to have a bunch of people unemployed but what does it mean to have a bunch of opportunity that nobody gives a darn about?”

Eberstadt explained in an op-ed for the “Wall Street Journal” that the country is facing an “unprecedented peacetime labor shortage, with employers practically begging for workers, while vast numbers of grown men and women sit on the sidelines of the economy. Never has work been so readily available in modern America; never have so many been uninterested in taking it.”

Carlson asked what young men are doing with their time instead of actively looking for a job and participating in the workforce.

“On average, over 2,000 hours a year on screens,” Rowe responded. “You know, four million fewer people are in the workforce today than before the lockdowns, and four million more jobs have opened up. It’s almost a perfect mirror image, and the reflection is kind of hideous.”

–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice