The number of US-born men aged 16 to 64 who are not in the labor force has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the total remains near a record high. In April 2025, according to a recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), 18.4 million working-age men born in the United States were not in the labor force, meaning they were jobless, not counted as unemployed, and weren’t actively looking for work. Add women to the mix, and that number jumps to more than 40 million. Though both sexes have shortages in the labor pool, the report primarily focuses on men. The issue doesn’t always rise and fall with the ups and downs of the economy. So what’s responsible for this phenomenon, and how do these people survive?
The Silent Crisis in the Labor Force
From 1960 to 2025, the share of working-age men born in the United States and not in the labor force increased by 13.1 million, while that of foreign-born men grew by 14.6 million. CIS also discovered that “the fall-off in immigration in the first three years of the Trump administration, before Covid, coincided with an increase in wages and labor force participation for less-educated, U.S.-born Americans relative to the higher period of immigration in the prior two decades.”
A 2016 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found immigration decreases wages for some native workers, mostly for the less educated, which can erode the incentive to work. National Review did an analysis a few years ago of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission discrimination cases and concluded “employers tend to favor foreign-born over native-born workers for manual-labor jobs.” Notably, however, the share of foreign-born men not in the labor force also has climbed over the decades.
The millions of migrants who have entered the country over the last decade have almost certainly nudged some Americans out of the workforce, though it would likely be a mistake to say every job taken by an immigrant is one lost by an American. Numerous other factors are at play.
Many blame declining wages, criminal histories, lack of education, and structural changes to the economy. Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, author of Men Without Work, believes family structure and the changing values and norms associated with the significance of work play a crucial role. Only around 50% of never-married US-born men aged 18 to 64 without a college education participate in the labor force: “[T]hey are not only close to 25 points below those of married native-born high-school dropouts, and well over 30 points lower than for never-married foreign-born high-school dropouts, but also nearly 40 points lower than for married foreign-born high-school dropouts.”
Education appears to be an obstacle for some, too: 87% of men of the nearly 18 million in the potential labor pool don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Another factor is mass incarceration. Though statistics exclude institutionalized men from being considered outside the workforce, they do face many structural barriers once released. Formerly incarcerated men with felonies on their record usually have a difficult time finding a job and are more likely than others to find alternative ways to survive, often creating more crime and social upheaval. One of those ways is legal, but it is not restricted to felons.
The Disability-Industrial Complex
Another possible cause is dependence on government benefits, such as disability programs. In May 2025, around 8 million people received disability benefits, including children and spouses of beneficiaries, according to the Pew Research Center. But the total wasn’t always this high. A surge occurred after former President Bill Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act in 1996. As welfare rolls thinned, disability claims rose.
A vast number of such claims nowadays are for “afflictions of ‘nervous sense and organs’ or ‘musculoskeletal system and connective tissue’ — medical gray zones,” said Eberstadt in the New York Post. It’s easy for a doctor to determine whether a patient has a cold or the flu, “but there is no conclusive test for sad feelings or back pain.”
It has “become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills,” said Chana Joffe-Walt in an NPR investigation of the disability boom. She spoke with Dr. Perry Timberlake in Hale County, Alabama, who explained his judgment when considering somebody’s disability status: “[I]f you have a particular back problem and a college degree, you’re not disabled. Without the degree, you are.” The reason for this, Joffe-Walt discovered, is that there’s not much low-wage work in Hale County except fast food jobs and a handful of positions requiring heavy lifting. There are probably many more counties like it in America, with physicians making similar calls to sideline people from the workforce.
A “disability-industrial complex” has emerged over the years, observed Joffe-Walt, and part of it lies in the legal system. Some lawyers have built careers out of helping people appeal disability insurance claims. The law office of Charles Binder in North Carolina represents up to 30,000 people a year for such appeals and takes home millions in fees while helping people get “the support they deserve.”
Those who survive on disability checks receive only about $1,500 per month, according to the Social Security website. This won’t provide a lavish lifestyle, but it can unlock other benefits once enrolled, such as Supplemental Security Income, providing a basis for working-age men and women to live work-free. As Eberstadt put it, these programs often incentivize helplessness.
Side Effects
Low labor force participation decreases economic growth and has negative fiscal implications. Being unemployed is also associated with social isolation, a deterioration in mental health, and a decline in physical well-being. Research shows a strong connection between not working and “deaths of despair,” such as suicide, drug overdose, and destructive levels of alcohol use. Getting men and women back into the workforce would be a win for the country and the unemployed. A good start might be to overhaul the disability-industrial complex. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his 1935 State of the Union address:
“The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
