The decline in men’s workforce participation is often reduced to a simple question: Are men becoming less willing to work?
The data tells a more complicated story.
In 1950, 86% of men participated in the labor force, compared with 34% of women.
In 2026, men’s participation has fallen to 69.5% — a 17 percentage-point decline, while women’s has risen to 57.9% — a 24 percentage-point increase.
In other words, over the past 76 years, men’s participation has steadily declined while women’s has nearly doubled.
That does not mean millions of men simply decided they were done working. Health problems, disappearing jobs, skills mismatches and caregiving all play a role in keeping men out of the workforce. But there is also a less comfortable question about what happens to men who remain disconnected from work for years.
A new paper from University of Connecticut economists offers another explanation: men’s expectations about work may be influenced by what they witnessed growing up. When young men see weak wages and high unemployment among the men around them, they may develop more pessimistic expectations about their own job prospects, making them less likely to enter the workforce later in life.
The economists argue that short-term weakness in the labor market can therefore create a much longer-lasting effect on whether men work.
Are men really choosing not to work?
Health is one of the biggest reasons men give for being outside the labor force. Among prime-age men outside the labor force in 2022, 39.5% reported illness or disability. Another 17.9% were caregivers and 11% were in school, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
The Bipartisan Policy Center has similarly found that physical or mental health conditions are a major reason prime-age men remain outside the workforce. Leaving work can become difficult to reverse, as a health condition can make finding a suitable job harder, while a long employment gap can make returning to work harder still.
Matthew Willner, a certified psychotherapist who works with professionals dealing with job loss, sees another dimension to the problem: identity.
“Work has long been the cornerstone of male identity,” Willner said. “Men are trained to believe their worth comes from what they produce,” he told Allwork.Space.
When a man’s career disappears and the available alternatives do not feel like a fit, the consequences can extend beyond his paycheck.
“When that is called into question by being laid off and seeing few options, his first move often isn’t a job search — it’s hiding,” Willner said.
The economy stopped offering some men the jobs they knew
There is also a straightforward economic explanation: for decades, manufacturing and other industries offered men without college degrees a path into relatively stable employment. Those jobs have contracted as automation, offshoring and the growth of service-based industries changed the economy.
Joel Marotti, senior managing partner at Vertical Media Solutions, argues that the problem is less about men suddenly losing their work ethic and more about the disappearance of familiar career paths.
“The economy didn’t stop needing workers. I think it kind of just stopped needing the kind of work those men were prepared to do,” Marotti told Allwork.Space.
The jobs replacing those positions often require different credentials and skills.
Healthcare, education, professional services and technology have continued to grow, while many of the occupations that once absorbed large numbers of men without four-year degrees have become smaller or more technically demanding.
That creates a difficult gap: there are jobs, but they are not necessarily the jobs displaced workers know how to do.
Meanwhile, women have moved into the growing economy
Women’s workforce participation has nearly doubled since 1950, helped by greater access to education and professions, changing workplace norms and the expansion of industries where women are heavily represented.
Healthcare and social assistance are particularly important. Data4thePeople found that the sector generated nearly 89% of U.S. payroll job growth since the end of 2023, while about 78% of workers in the industry are women.
Women accounted for roughly 60% of the increase in employed Americans between December 2023 and December 2025, according to the same analysis.
Rohit Agarwal, co-founder of recruitment firm Zenius, points to another reason women’s employment has become increasingly important: households need the income.
“Multiple sources of income have become increasingly necessary to sustain households,” Agarwal told Allwork.Space. “Many women cannot afford to not participate in an earning workforce. Their earnings have become important to household stability.”
Men face a skills problem
The numbers can make it tempting to ask whether men are simply choosing not to work. There is evidence that some are becoming disconnected from both employment and education, although that does not explain the entire decline.
Maruf Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Dexian, told Allwork.Space “The decline in men’s participation isn’t a decline in their willingness to work.”
He said the headline numbers are partly affected by an aging population, but participation has also fallen among men who are still in their working years, pointing to a deeper problem with how workers connect to the jobs being created.
Men now make up about 42% of four-year college undergraduates, down from 47% in 2011. Among adults ages 25 to 34 in 2024, 47% of women had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 37% of men, according to the Pew Research Center.
Many of the industries that once gave men without four-year degrees a straightforward path into stable work have become smaller, more automated or more technically demanding. Manufacturing, operations and infrastructure jobs increasingly require digital skills, technical certifications and specialized training.
At the same time, women have been moving into an economy that increasingly rewards those credentials.
Ahmed called the growth in women’s workforce participation “one of the most positive economic developments of the past 75 years.” More professions opened to women, women invested heavily in education and technology expanded the types of work available to them.
Workplace flexibility has also helped women remain attached to the workforce while managing responsibilities outside of work, Ahmed said. Companies are increasingly drawing women into technical, financial and leadership positions that were once less accessible to them.
The contrast is striking: women gained access to more of the jobs the modern economy was creating, while many men lost access to the types of jobs that had once provided their economic foothold.
Ahmed said the lesson is that participation grows when people have access to opportunity, skills and workplace structures that allow them to stay employed.
For employers, that means creating more ways for people to move into growing fields rather than relying on traditional talent pipelines. “The jobs have not necessarily disappeared as much as they have changed,” Ahmed told Allwork.Space.
The cost of staying out
The consequences of workforce detachment can extend beyond the labor market.
Willner says prolonged unemployment can affect men’s sense of identity and contribute to isolation. He also sees similar pressures emerging in technology, where AI is putting new pressure on traditionally male-dominated careers such as software engineering.
“As AI continues to mature, I expect more men to feel obsolete and shut out of careers they built their identities around,” Willner said.
Women’s participation has risen dramatically because barriers to employment fell while access to education, professions and more flexible work expanded. The same principle could apply to men who have been left behind by the disappearance of traditional career paths.
As Ahmed put it, employers will increasingly need to treat potential as something they can build, not simply something they can find.
The question, then, is not simply why fewer men are working. It is whether the economy is creating enough clear, accessible paths for them to get back in.
