Men’s labor market participation has fallen, but the decline is uneven

Men’s labor market participation has weakened over the long run, while recent employment data point to a wider gap between men and women. CNBC’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that seasonally adjusted male employment in September was about 1.2 million below its level a year earlier, while women’s employment was more than 650,000 higher. The report said payrolls added 29,000 jobs in the month.

That monthly snapshot does not describe a uniform decline across all men or every measure of work. The American Institute for Boys and Men estimates that participation among men aged 16 and older fell from 75% in 2000 to 68% in 2025, but has been broadly stable since 2020.

Why are men’s labor market participation rates falling?

Part of the answer is demographic. The institute estimates that, if the age distribution of men had remained at its 2000 composition, the overall participation rate would have been about 73% in 2025 rather than 68%. Older people are less likely than prime-age adults to be in the workforce, even though participation among men aged 55 to 64 rose from 67% in 2000 to 72% in 2024.

The sharper movement has been among younger men. Participation for men aged 16 to 24 declined from 69% in 2000 to 57% in 2024 or 2025, according to the institute, while the rate for men aged 25 to 54 eased from 92% to 89%. More young men are in education, delaying entry to work, which accounts for some of that change. Yet the share of young men neither in school nor looking for work rose from 4% in 1990 to 8% in 2024.

Educational attainment also marks a divide. Since 1976, participation among prime-age men with a high-school qualification or less fell by 8 percentage points, compared with a 3-point decline among those with at least a bachelor’s degree, the institute reported.

Industry composition can affect the short-term figures. CNBC reported that health care generated more than half of September’s payroll expansion. Women represented 77.6% of workers in the combined health care and social assistance sector in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Growth concentrated in sectors with that workforce mix can therefore lift women’s employment more than men’s, without establishing that men cannot enter those jobs.

Why do the employment measures differ?

Labor-force participation is the share of the civilian, noninstitutional population that is working or actively seeking work. The employment-to-population ratio counts the share that has a job. Unemployment is narrower: it is the share of the labor force without work that is actively looking. People not in the labor force include students, retirees, caregivers and people with disabilities, among others.

Payroll employment is different again. It is drawn from an employer survey that counts jobs rather than people, can count multiple-job holders more than once and excludes some workers, including the self-employed. Low unemployment therefore does not show how people outside the job search are faring.

Several explanations remain proposals rather than settled conclusions. Fortune reported that a San Francisco Federal Reserve study identified schooling, caregiving, skills mismatch and disability as factors that can pull or push men from the workforce. An NBER study by Remy Levin and Daniela Vidart found that exposure in childhood to weak wages and high unemployment among men may shape lower expectations of work’s returns later in life. Those findings describe possible mechanisms, not a single explanation for all men’s labor-market outcomes.

This story draws on original reporting from CNBC.