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Comment by estro0182 | Hacker News Reader

This chart is insane. I wonder what combination of phenomena this data can be explained by?

I'm not sure exactly how this particular number is calculated but given the fairly consistent trend I'd suggest longer education before employment, earlier retirement and retired people not dying as early seem likely.

Some other people think it's women entering the workforce, but that not a 1 for 1 affect here and it seems women have possibly hit a similar downward point.:

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/03/women-in-the-labor-f...

Imagine how much work it would take to maintain a household without a dishwasher, or a washing machine, or a vacuum cleaner, or febreeze, or modern medicine, or...

We have significantly decreased the cost of chores. They are still extremely painful, but 1/10 the burden they used to be.

I'd guess two of several factors:

- Loss of manufacturing jobs since 1950, primarily held by men

- Women's increasing participation in the labor force

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/03/women-in-the-labor-f...

Honestly, (young) women in the workplace generally make for a better experience. They typically care more about creating a nice friendly atmosphere.

Young men (used to) bring assertiveness and a created an atmosphere of competition.

Maybe these roles aren't so clearly divided any more. For the vast number of job positions, it doesn't matter much in terms of competence who gets the job. It matters so much more that the coworkers are comfortable and enjoy the workplace.

Men had obvious advantage in physically demanding jobs, but fewer and fewer of these remain.

It's funny. At three places I worked at, I often heard from women that they preferred to work with men "because they are easier going, more honest and their mood is more stable".

I as a man, prefer to work with women. I've met some remarkable women and learned a lot from them and not only in tech.

Your post is just "Let me tell you about the stereotypes I hold".

I think it is a bit more complicated than just a stereotype. "Women bringing a different, less adversarial, work culture" is a trope present in the works of some feminist activist, DEI workshop facilitators, and sociological researchers. Usually it is phrased more as "we should be more accepting of workstyles that differ from the dominant workstyle", where the dominant workstyle happens to be associated with our current stereotypes about masculinity. This is definitely a difficult to discuss topic where you really need to steelman what you hear, otherwise the conversation quickly devolves.

But that doesn't mean it is invalid when making sense of observations and phenomena.

Stereotype is just another word for "expectations based on experiences". It's not claimed to be finite absolute truth.

There is no existing explanation because it is invariant under recessions and other events. The only change that you can see is COVID.

Covid job losses were more on women side then male side. (Partly due to kids and partly due to women being more in service sector that lost more jobs)

Barely. 3.2% vs 3.3%, per https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

Wouldn't increasing labor participation by women displace, and also counteract the need for, male labor participation?

You are assuming that the amount of jobs are zero sum and I don't think we can answer that question. There are situations where there doesn't have to be displacement such as producing goods faster that require more and more people have to sell the item productive.

But, if we would assume that people keep on getting more and more productive due to corporations optimizing for productivity wouldn't we see a drop off of both women and men at the same time? I don't think we would legitimately seem the existing of displacement but actually mutual decreasing.

It might not be zero-sum but someone still has to raise the kids. I'd imagine we'd see dads dropping out of the workforce any time the mom makes more and dad's income doesn't more than cover full time 3rd party childcare.

I was curious about this and looked into it some. Unfortunately couldn't find any source material reliable or concise enough for me to consider linking here - but my overall take on the data is that stay at home dads certainly increased in number, but nowhere near the change these graphs depict.

Numbers vary, but even as of today there are low-single-digit millions of stay at home fathers (under the liberal definition of "18+ male with children in the home who does not work") vs. about ~1m total in the late 80's. Seems like it may account for a point or two on the graphs, but not much more.

Note also that it’s the lower earner’s income after paying the marginal income tax rate on it (when analyzing “what if they quit their job to stay at home?”, marginal, not average, tax rate drives the decision).

For a high-earning couple in a high-tax state, this could be ~50%.

> It might not be zero-sum but someone still has to raise the kids.

In generations past, that was done by women who were counted as not having a job (despite working longer hours than their husbands, 7 days a week). That doesn't need to be the case -- and in fact, dual-income households can create jobs: cleaners, cooks (delivery drivers etc), and childcare. In my grandma's generation, a woman's household duties also included gardening and preserving foods, and making/repairing clothes -- but those jobs have been outsourced so completely that they're now seen as quirky hobbies.

You are still making a guess on what happens and while I have seen that anecdotally I am unsure how this is happening at large.

Keep in mind that the lower bound on this chart is 65%, not 0. Threw me off at first.

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