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.
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