J.D. Vance Says 7 Million Able-Bodied Men Have Dropped Out of the Labor Force. Where Are They?
There are many explanations for the slow, long-term decline in work force participation among American men. Undocumented immigration doesn't seem to be a major factor.
During a recent interview with New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) argued that illegal immigration has contributed to a worrying decline in the number of American men who are part of the labor force.
The exchange began with Garcia-Navarro asking Vance about the potential "knock-on effects" of his plan to deport millions of undocumented workers, which could be a particularly serious blow to the construction industry. In response, Vance suggested that jobs vacated by deported migrants would be filled instead by Americans who are sitting on the sidelines.
"You would take, let's say for example, the seven million prime-age men who have dropped out of the labor force…You absolutely could re-engage folks into the American labor market," Vance said. Later in the exchange, he returned to that figure, saying that "one of the really deranged things" caused by high levels of undocumented immigration is that "it gets us in a mind-set of saying we can only build houses with illegal immigrants, when we have seven million—just men, not even women, just men—who have completely dropped out of the labor force."
"We cannot have an entire American business community that is giving up on American workers and then importing millions of illegal laborers," he concluded. "That is what we have thanks to Kamala Harris's border policies."
This argument is worth examining closely, because it is fundamental to the economic worldview of Vance and the so-called New Right, which wants to use government force—including, but not limited to, those deportations—to help American workers, even if that aid comes with an economic cost. It's the same fundamental calculus that underpins conservative support for tariffs, industrial policy, and other forms of governmental intervention: that the market's relentless drive to provide cheaper products and to shift production toward more affordable labor is a bad tradeoff for some Americans.
Here, Vance has identified that group quite clearly and proposed a tidy solution. Kick out undocumented workers, and give those jobs to the 7 million American men who have left the labor force.
But where are those 7 million men? And why aren't they already filling some of the 8 million available jobs in the country?
Let's start with the figure itself. Vance seems to be borrowing this stat from Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Eberstadt argues that America has seen "a mass exodus of men from the workforce" and points to the fact that more than 10 percent of American men of prime working age (from 25 to 54) are neither working nor looking for work. He calls this "America's invisible crisis"—invisible because individuals who leave the work force are not included in the calculation of the unemployment rate, which counts only those who are actively seeking work (a point that Vance also made in his interview with the Times).
Vance's interpretation of Eberstadt's analysis assumes that those 7 million men are eager to find work, and indeed would find work if their potential jobs weren't currently held by, for example, undocumented workers building homes.
Illegal immigration, Vance says, is "one of the biggest reasons why we have millions of people who've dropped out of the labor force. Why try to re-engage an American citizen in a good job if you can just import somebody from Central America who's going to work under the table for poverty wages? It is a disgrace, and it has led to the evisceration of the American middle class."
That's a huge logical leap—one that requires Vance to ignore several other explanations for slow, decades-long decline in the labor force participation rate of American men. It's also a conclusion that is not supported by Eberstadt's own research into this phenomenon.
Indeed, Eberstadt's work shows that the decline in work force participation of American men has been steady and ongoing since the 1960s. It has continued steadily during periods when immigration has been high, and when it has been low.
Other economic factors also fail to explain this steady decline, as Eberstadt wrote in an essay for National Affairs in 2020: "The tempo of workforce withdrawal appears to be almost completely unaffected by the tempo of national economic growth, which varied appreciably over this period. Even recessions—including the Great Recession—appear to have scarcely any impact on the trend. Likewise, the NAFTA agreement, China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and other 'disruptive' trade events with major implications for the demand for labor in America do not stand out," Eberstadt wrote in 2020.
In other words, it's not the natcon boogeymen of free trade and immigration that are driving this outcome. Eberstadt has argued that a lack of educational options for low-income men is the primary cause, though a number of cultural changes have also played a role, including "family structure, government-benefit dependence, and mass incarceration."
Conspicuously absent from that list: undocumented immigration. (I emailed Eberstadt to ask for his views on Vance's remarks, but he did not respond before publication.)
Contrary to Vance's claim, it does not seem like most of those men have been forced out of the work force by employers who are eager to "import somebody from Central America who's going to work under the table for poverty wages." Rather, they've left the work force for a variety of reasons. Some are in jail, some are disabled, some are caring for family members or otherwise unable to commit to a full-time job. The notion that America has 7 million able-bodied men who would be working if only they could find a job is misguided.
Vance's argument also ignores other relevant details, like the fact that men's participation in the labor force has increased over the past four years. It's not what you'd expect to see if the Biden administration's immigration policies were forcing working-age American men out of jobs.
"Inability to find a job has played a minimal role in men's declining labor supply," concluded Eberstadt's colleague Scott Winship, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in an essay published last month by Fusion. After reviewing decades of data about why nonworking men are still without a job, Winship concluded that "only about a quarter of the increase in prime-age men who were jobless for a full year was explained by men who wanted a job."
In an email on Wednesday, Winship said that he was "agnostic" about whether reducing immigration would boost wages for native-born workers or bring more men into the work force.
But the story of the 7 million missing working-age men is certainly far more complicated than Vance's attempt to scapegoat migrant workers. Indeed, if federal policy is to blame for the decline in labor force participation among men, Vance should be paying more attention to welfare benefits for native-born workers rather than the consequences of undocumented immigrants.
"The decline in work force participation among working-age men hasn't been due to any deterioration in the labor market or economy," Winship wrote in an email on Wednesday. "It mostly reflects rising school enrollment, increased responsibilities at home, earlier retirement, and especially increased receipt of disability benefits. The latter is primarily a problem with our disability policy rather than with our economy."
