The Fact
Among men ages 25 to 54, labor-force participation fell from 95.8% in 1970 to 89.1% in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What This Means
The long-run work story for men is not simply that men kept doing what they always did while women entered the labor force. Prime-age men's attachment to the labor force weakened over the same broad period. That is part of the same household-and-work transformation and needs its own explanation.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, prime-age male labor-force participation series, 1969–2019.