This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchler.

Men without work.

I welcome Nicholas Aberstout of the American Enterprise Institute to help me understand

his book published some years before and now republished with a post-pandemic note from

the author about what we learn from these years of statistics about men without work.

I will transfer my thinking immediately to a metaphor that Nick uses in the course of

his presentation.

A ghost army.

Nick, congratulations again for updating your observations of the middle of this second

decade of the 21st century.

We're now plunging the third decade.

And after the pandemic, there are lessons here that are fresh.

We're going to begin, however, with what is the ghost army?

What do you mean by that?

Thank you, Nick.

John, thank you so much for inviting me on.

The ghost army are the men without work in modern America.

I'm focusing in particular on what are called the men of prime working age, not my term,

the five to 54 years old, the backbone of the economy still, the group that is absolutely

indispensable in the forming of families and the raising of children as well.

For over half a century, we have seen a collapse of work for this critical group mainly due

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