This is John Bachelor. I learned from Nicholas Eberstot, author of Men Without Work.

And in this excerpt of the conversation I learned that there is no single explanation for why it is that males of working age in the

United States of America are not going to work, are not participating in the workplace very available in anywhere close to the

numbers that once upon a time was the American standard. What are the

explanations? Post-pandemic edition of this book deals with this mystery.

It continues and it is a threat to the prosperity of the United States that so many young people of

working age are not working. Is it lack of skills? Is it the factories have left? Is it all of the above or none of the above? Here's

Nicholas Aberstot to explain the phenomenon, at least the puzzle of the phenomenon.

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, 25 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 to an exit of men from the workforce altogether.

And as we speak, John, over 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 are out of the workforce altogether, neither working nor looking for work.

In the old, in the ancient classical days, if one talked about a Roman Legion being decimated, that

meant that they had lost a tenth of their membership. We now have lost over a tenth of our prime age men from the workforce. They're out of it altogether. They're not even

unemployed because they're not looking for work. They are in this nether world

which I think we can talk of as a ghost army.

There's much more later. Thank you.