Where Men Aren’t Working
By GREGOR AISCH, JOSH KATZ and DAVID LEONHARDT DEC. 11, 2014
There are still places in the United States where nearly all men in their prime working years have a job. In the affluent sections of Manhattan; in the energy belt that extends down from the Dakotas; in the highly educated suburbs of San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, Boston and elsewhere, more than 90 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are working in many neighborhoods. The male employment rates in those areas resemble the nationwide male employment rates in the 1950s and 1960s.
On the whole, however, it’s vastly more common today than it was decades ago for prime-age men not to be working. Across the country, 16 percent of such men are not working, be they officially unemployed or outside of the labor force — disabled, discouraged, retired, in school or taking care of family. That number has more than tripled since 1968.
This map allows you to examine nonemployment rates for prime-age men in every census tract and every county. (Census-tract borders typically follow city or town lines, although they are much finer in large cities.) The data is an average of surveys taken from 2009 to 2013. You can see the low nonwork rates in those prosperous areas. More strikingly, you can also see sky-high rates across much of Appalachia, the Deep South, northern Michigan, the Southwest and the Northwest. In many towns across Clarke County, Ala.; Iosco County, Mich.; Malheur County, Ore.; and McKinley County, N.M., more than 40 percent of prime-age are not working. Many of them are likely to remain out of work for months or years more, and some of them will never hold a steady job again.
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California is starting to rival New York City as the nation’s inequality capital. The state is home to many of the world’s hottest companies and some of its richest people. It’s also home to a large class of high-earning professionals with college degrees. Some of them live in places like Mountain View (home to Google) or Los Gatos (home to Netflix). In some census tracts, more than 95 percent of prime-age men are working. Yet overall employment rates in many parts of the state are lower than you might imagine, given the state’s many economic successes. Even in some of the most affluent counties — Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Orange in the southern part of the state, San Francisco, Marin and Santa Clara in the north — 15 percent to 20 percent of prime-age men are not working. For every place like Mountain View, there are others not so far away where nonwork rates approach 30 percent. And in some inland areas and counties in the far north, nonwork rates are even higher.
Maps and article at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/12/upshot/where-men-arent-working-map.html?abt=0002&abg=1
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