More work, fewer lonely men?

Exploring the tie between employment and social connection

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The book I’m currently reading, The Lonely Century, confirms the link between work and loneliness. People who aren’t working are lonelier than people who are.

The link between loneliness and employment gets even more interesting, to me at least, when we look at the demographics of loneliness.

Basically, there’s a lot of overlap between who’s most lonely and who’s not working.

For instance, women are less socially isolated than men on average. Now, female labor participation rates are about 10 points lower than male. But, look at the trends since 1950:

Single men are especially at risk for both social isolation and reported loneliness. And guess what correlates with being single, especially for men? Not having a jobby job my babies.

According to The Lonely Century, older people are the loneliest, on average. But young people are also especially lonely. Again, young men are at particularly at risk. And today a third of men with a high school diploma aren’t in the labor force and men between the ages of 25 and 34 have seen the biggest decline in labor force participation over the past 50 years.

It’s interesting that just today I read that 23% of all workers in Alabama need a license to do their jobs.

All this to say that reducing cultural and governmental barriers to work such as reducing credentialism and decriminalizing work would boost economic growth. And making it easier for men to work would very likely also help them become less lonely.

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