Discussion on:

Men's incomes have declined 28% since 1968: study

Other studies have shown that women under 28 are on average earning MORE than their male peers for the very reasons sited here.

One interesting study found that the overall average income for women STEM graduates is still lower than men because most schools still encourage women students into teaching professions and men into industry.

Schools do not pay young teachers as well as industry yet industry is called sexist because of the pay gap. No wants to blame the sexist STEM school curriculum stuck in the 19th century where only women are encouraged to go into teaching.

Modern society, and to much extent, a few overly pushy women and the men that really go overboard sucking up to them, as well as overly effeminate men, if you can call them 'men', has pushed the emasculation of the male ideal in every aspect. No wonder men are not motivated to work, to get more education, and no wonder if they are injured and end up on SSDI, they have little desire to return to a politically correct, 'sensitive' work environment. Are we men or mice?

While the general trend of women versus men in the labor pool is accurate, the statistics cited here make male employment look a lot worse than it is. First of all, the total workforce participation rate for men and women combined as of September 5, 2012 is 63.5% (see http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000/ ). One of the biggest problems with our economy is that it has been steadily declining (it was at 66.5% in January, 2002). It's also why the unemployment rate has been going down despite a hiring rate that can't even keep up with population growth -- people keep leaving the labor pool and don't get counted in the unemployment rate.

As of August, 2012, if you break it down by sexes in the civilian non-institutionalized population over 20, the male participation rate is currently at 72.7%, the female participation rate is at 59.3%. There are currently about 6.5 million more men than women in the labor force in this category even though women outnumber men in this age range by 17.2 million. See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm .

Many economists blame the overall decline in the labor force on the growing government dependency being fostered by big government advocates over the past 20 years. The explosion in food stamp participation over the past 3 years is unrivaled against any past recession. The growth has been driven largely through aggressive government advertising and a loosening of the program qualifications.

The ongoing roll back of the Clinton welfare reforms mirrors the downward trend in female work participation you discuss.

These politics of poverty where votes are bought with benefits have a huge impact on society. When people are encouraged not to work those are the economic numbers you see.

...is that you make if viable.

This week's employment statistics are proof of this. Employment (U-1) remains mostly static, but workforce participation (U-6) is the lowest it's been since the last major recession of the early '80s. How can this be? Obviously more people than ever before are finding it survivable to remain unemployed.

"Male-dominated sectors such as manufacturing have decreased as a share of the economy" deserves more attention. There's off-shoring, there's automation - large numbers of men replaced by fewer people working in robotics - and there's the decline of labor unions, depressing wage growth for the men who remain. If not for local regulations, many highly paid construction workers building residences would have been replaced by lower wage factory workers.

Just an aside comment here. The mention about a decline of college educated males after '77, could be a sign of an unintended effect. The old GI bill had a time limit of 10yrs after service in the military (I'm not sure of what the current bill has.). Part of this was a scaling back of military benefits after the Vietnam conflict. I wonder if this could be a partial trigger by reducing the ability of guys to afford college? If so what about when we start scaling back the budget for ex-service members? There WILL be calls to reduce spending just like last time. Maybe that will set us up for a future downturn in skill levels and education when we NEED both.