Another Reason Men Don't Work: Imaginary World More Enjoyable Than The Real World

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

President Trump, like President Obama before him, point out the low unemployment rate as a measure of success.

What they don’t point out are masses of people on welfare via fraudulent disabilities, people in school wasting money in dead-end retraining exercises, people who have simply given up looking for a job, and people in forced retirement needing Social Security payments to survive.

A team of researchers from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester discusses another class of individuals who are not working but are not counted as unemployed: People, primarily young men who are addicted to games. For such individuals, games provide a fantasy world that is far more enjoyable than the real world.

Please consider their report on Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men.

Between 2000 and 2015, market hours worked fell by 203 hours per year (12 percent) for younger men ages 21-30, compared to a decline of 163 hours per year (8 percent) for men ages 31-55. These declines started prior to the Great Recession, accelerated sharply during the recession, and have rebounded only modestly since. We use a variety of data sources to document that the hours decline was particularly pronounced for younger men.

Not only have hours fallen, but there is a large and growing segment of this population that appears detached from the labor market: 15 percent of younger men, excluding full-time students, worked zero weeks over the prior year as of 2016. The comparable number in 2000 was only 8 percent.

A natural question is how these younger men support themselves given their decline in earnings. We document that 67 percent of non-employed younger men lived with a parent or close relative in 2015, compared to 46 percent in 2000.

One avenue to gauge how younger men perceive their fortunes is to use survey data on happiness. In this spirit, we complement the patterns in hours, wages, and consumption with data on life satisfaction from the General Social Survey. We find that younger men reported increased happiness during the 2000s, despite stagnant wages, declining employment rates and increased propensity to live with parents/relatives. This contrasts sharply with older men, whose satisfaction clearly fell, tracking their decline in employment.

Annual Hours and Employment Rates

Zero Weeks Worked

Real Wages

Two Questions

1. The study found gaming trends apply to younger men, not older men and not women. Do women more than men like to live in the real world?

2. Is happiness a function of increased gaming or a reflection on changing attitudes of millennials in general towards material things?

The research report ties in nicely with Growing Number of Companies Complain About Inability to Find Workers: So Why is Wage Growth So Low?

Watch Live: Obama's First Public Speech Since Leaving The White House

As previewed last Friday, ending a three-month period of silence since he left the White House on Jan. 20 - much of which was spent on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., on a Caribbean island with English billionaire Richard Branson and at an exclusive resort in French Polynesia -  former president Barack Obama will make the first public appearance of his post-presidency at noon on Monday when he speaks at the University of Chicago.

Obama will address community organizers, activists and students at the university, which will be the site of his presidential library.

He met with at-risk youth on Sunday in the same South Side Chicago neighborhood where he began his career as a community organizer. His speech comes just days before Trump"s 100th day in office on Saturday.

Watch Obama"s speech below:

Obama To Make First Public Statement Since Leaving White House

Ending a three-month period of silence since he left the White House on Jan. 20 - much of which was spent on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., on a Caribbean island with English billionaire Richard Branson and at an exclusive resort in French Polynesia -  former president Barack Obama will make the first public appearance of his post-presidency on Monday when he speaks at an event in his hometown of Chicago, his office said.

According to a statement issued by his office, Obama will participate in a town hall-style discussion with young people on “community organizing and civic engagement” at the University of Chicago, near the site of his planned presidential library. "This event is part of President Obama’s post-presidency goal to encourage and support the next generation of leaders driven by strengthening communities around the country and the world," his office said in a statement.

The event is the beginning of Obama’s reentry into public life, the Hill notes.

The Chicago town hall comes just days before Trump"s 100th day in office, but according to sources cited by The Hill, Obama isn’t expected to use his events to go after his successor.

“It’s not in anyone’s interest ... for [Obama] to become the face of the resistance or narrate the Trump presidency,” one person said earlier this month. “He’s acutely aware that when he speaks, he sucks up all the oxygen, and that suppresses the next generation of leaders from rising.”

Still, Obama has indirectly gone after Trump on several occasions, issuing statements praising protests against his travel ban and defending the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans attempted to repeal last month.

Obama is also scheduled to travel to Boston next month to accept the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He will also meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, in a visit that coincides with President Trump’s first overseas trip to a NATO summit in Belgium.

Yesterday, the former president also dipped his toe into international politics, phoning French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, the top challenger to Marine Le Pen and the favorite of Europe"s pro-status quo establishment. In the past, Stephen Bannon, have praised Le Pen and her anti-immigration views.  According to a statement, Obama wished Macron the best during the call, which the French candidate posted to his Twitter account. But Obama"s office said it did not amount to an endorsement, perhaps remembering the impact of his "endorsement" for the anti-Brexit forces last summer.