From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Thanks very much for joining us. If you don't already, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify and elsewhere, and do kindly leave us a nice review.

This week on the podcast,

we're going to examine what exactly is happening to the US labour force. Despite proliferating

signs of weakness in the US economy, jobs growth since the pandemic has been relatively strong,

with overall employment recently returning to its pre-COVID high. But at the same time,

millions of Americans have left the workforce, and job vacancies

remain near all-time highs with employers reporting labor shortages across the economy. Nicholas Eberstadt,

an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, has documented the changing nature of U.S. employment

over the years. In his 2016 book, Men Without Work, he chronicled one especially alarming trend,

the sharp decline in the number of men with

jobs. Millions of working-aged men have been retreating from the labor force for years,

and that trend has accelerated since the pandemic. In a new edition of the book to be published in

September, he examines how the male exodus from work has now intensified and how it's

spreading, in fact, to other demographics. And he explains why this shift represents such a major challenge for the US economy and for the country's future. Dr. Ebersat is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI, and he joins me now. Nick, thank you very much indeed for being here. Thanks for inviting me. So, Nick, let's start with this phenomenon that you've been tracking for a long time, which has large implications for the US economy, which economy, which is the decline of men, of working-age men in the labor force. And if you

would, if you just lay out some of the basic data, put it into historical context, and explain

what's been going on. Sure. What economists call prime working-age men, it's pretty self-explanatory,

guys 25 and 54 are still the backbone of the economy,

and they have a tiny non-economic role in life also in raising families, raising children.

Up until the 1960s, work rates for prime age men in America were consistent and very high.

And then starting in the mid-60s, something changed.

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