The great American jobs machine is faltering, and it is time for Washington to pay attention. Participation in the workforce is falling, the pace of job creation is anemic, and long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high. Many newly created jobs pay less than those that disappeared during the Great Recession, so real wages are stagnating, and median household income is no higher than it was a quarter of a century ago.I can't tell you how long I've waited for these fuckers to acknowledge this!
...Part of the problem is the weakness of the current economic recovery. During the Great Recession, the labor-force participation rate declined. But even after the downturn ended in mid-2009, the rate continued to decline. It has fallen more since the recovery began than it did between December 2007 and June 2009. The aging of the U.S. workforce explains only a fraction of this worrisome development. Something else is going on.Preach it, brother! Things haven't just been getting shittier since the recession; they've been getting shittier for decades as the employment scene has shifted from jobs ordinary people could make a living at to jobs you need two of, or a college education to obtain. This scarcity and the attendant pressures on people's lives are transforming the country into a neo-feudal state. I'm just glad the Journal is catching up...
In the early 1960s, labor-force participation among men ages 25 to 64 began a slow steady decline from 95% to about 84% today, a trend masked by the surge of women into the labor force. But women's participation in the labor force peaked in 2000 and has since declined by two percentage points. Unless men re-enter the job market, prospects for the resumption of vigorous growth in the U.S. labor force are dim.Blink. Blink.
So... they think the money itself isn't what's important; what's important is that more of the people earning what little there is of it should have penises.
Oh, well; maybe a few more generations of this shit will... actually, no.
UPDATE. I wonder if Kay Hymowitz has caught up with this. She's one of our preeminent anti-feminist scolds, but back in 2007 she was telling us how great the creative destruction of manufacturing jobs had been for America, and decried "the mechanical repetition endured by the men and women who bolted thingamajigs to widgets on the assembly line." Ah, here she is in 2011, telling us "today’s labor market prizes female strengths more than male strengths" and "younger women... have shown they can easily be men’s equals, and possibly even their superiors, in the knowledge economy." But is she as happy as she had been four years earlier that foreign slaves have taken over the widgets and thingamajigs from Americans, allowing women to rise? Recall that, in the interval, Obama was elected and Men's Rights nuts became an important Republican constituency, and take a guess:
Beginning in the middle of 20th century, not coincidentally the same historical moment that great numbers of women were moving into the workforce and becoming economically independent, the universal assumption that men were essential to family life started to erode. Divorce and single motherhood began to rise; even today, though divorce rates have declined, 40% of American children are now born to single mothers...
This existential theory, stressing the loss of men’s primary social role, is impossible to prove with any certainty.Heh.
But there is some evidence that unmarried men are less motivated in the workplace.The bitches-ruin-everything racket must be some sweet, easy money.
UPDATE 2. In comments, my guests wonder what economy the Journal editors are looking at. "On planet WSJ," says Derelict, "those high-paying jobs are hanging on the lowest branches, just waiting to fall into the outstretched scrotums of anyone who can piss high enough up the wall." Haystack nicely encapsulates their argument: "In order for there to be more jobs, more men have to find jobs." And Chris V82 asks, plaintively, "So tell me, exactly, what I have to do with my penis to get a new job. Do you want me to cum on your face? I'll do it, as long as I get some extra vacation days."
Also, Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps alerts us that at Instapundit, the Ole Perfesser "heh-indeeds that this is just another sign that men have Gone Galt! in the face of feminism and shills his wife's book." Since crackpot conservative themes often get a trial run on the Perfesser's pages, it looks like the New Thing for the Right Wing is glibertarianism plus Men's Rights advocacy. If you don't think these two groups would get along, you haven't been paying attention.
