When Young Men Don’t Work
Immigrants replace them in the labor force; leisure replaces work in their lives.
“[T]he United States has been a magnet for low-skill immigration even as low-skill natives have worked less and less,” Richwine writes.
..What it does show is that immigrants are picking up the slack left by jobless natives, taking the pressure off American society to do something about its problem of idle young men. Businesses looking for low-skill labor, for example, don’t have to attract natives, because they can hire immigrants instead—leaving low-skill natives to do whatever it is they do in their parents’ basements when they don’t have jobs.
..Since the early 2000s, young, low-skill men have added about four hours a week to their leisure time, replacing almost one-to-one the working hours they lost.
About three of those additional hours are spent on video games.
Each day, low-skill young men who aren’t employed spend an average of about two hours apiece (roughly 12 hours a week) playing video games.
Each day, a quarter of these nonworking men game for three hours or longer; a tenth game six hours or more. (Note that it’s hard to say whether these are the same people binging day after day. In the time-diary survey, each person is interviewed only once, about what they did on a single day.)
.. there is a difference between correlation and causation, and if men left the labor force for reasons unrelated to video games, no one would be surprised if they nonetheless ended up playing more video games in their newfound free time. But he offers an argument that is at least plausible:
.. However, if it were up to him, I have no doubt he would play video games 23-and-a-half hours per day. He told me so. If we didn’t ration video games, I am not sure he would ever eat. I am positive he wouldn’t shower.
.. Even among low-skill men who aren’t employed, only about 40 percent play video games on any given day, while more than 80 percent watch TV or movies.
.. if there’s anything to the argument that leisure time has become more pleasant, the story should start with TV, not video games.
.. Perhaps one should not dwell too long, however, on the question of what type of leisure low-skill young men are engaging in. The more important fact remains that leisure is slowly replacing work in their lives, as immigrants replace them in the labor force.