> The big shift in the labor market has been away from the kinds of jobs which could be done largely through physical strength, and/or with relatively low levels of education. Stereotypically, the guy with maybe a high school diploma could come out and get a pretty good union job in a factory. And those jobs are just becoming scarcer and scarcer because of these changes in the economy.
Manufacturing has been dwindling for decades as a result of deliberate policy choices to offshore. So it's not as if this is a new thing.
Without factory work, non-professional men have been shunted into precarious low-quality driving and general logistics - Uber, Deliveroo, other parcel couriers, warehouse logistics.
Most of those don't require physical strength, so the premise that Diploma Man wants a job with heavy lifting to feel manly is bizarre.
Manufacturing is not dwindling; manufacturing employment has been, but it was that way everywhere in the world. It's productivity. There's nothing that could be done about it.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1133586707/boys-men-labor-for...
> The big shift in the labor market has been away from the kinds of jobs which could be done largely through physical strength, and/or with relatively low levels of education. Stereotypically, the guy with maybe a high school diploma could come out and get a pretty good union job in a factory. And those jobs are just becoming scarcer and scarcer because of these changes in the economy.