Who are these out-of-work men? A huge portion of them are just floating through life. Some of them live with an older parent. These men tend to be unmarried. They don’t attend church. They don’t belong to civic groups, or do a lot of caregiving for other relatives. For his part, Eberstadt doesn’t come down hard on blaming either cultural factors like the decline of stigma for joblessness, or structural and economic reasons, like globalization and trade.
Not all of these men without work are Trump voters. In fact, a significant portion aren’t voters at all (they are felons who have served their time and been released). Less than 10 percent of the men without work are pursuing some form of education or training that might make them working men. Many of the men without work belong to a racial minority. But immigrant men outpace natives in their overall work rate. If you don’t know many prime-age men who are unemployed and not looking for work, that’s a good indicator that you’re somewhat insulated within the parts of the American class system that are doing well. It also means you are insulated from the retired parents, girlfriends, and friend networks on which these men’s lack of work also exacts a cost.
Even when his policies seem economically illiterate, or tinged with an unproductive nostalgia, Donald Trump ends up winning this issue by default, because his campaign questions the entire modern consensus about economic policy. These out-of-work men and the people who know them can’t be reassured by saying, “Actually, America is already great. The Fed chair says we have maximum employment.”
Trump questions the trade deals that make a globalized economy possible. He says he would put pressure on individual job creators. And yes, he invokes the image of the kind of economy that no president can recreate.
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