Men without college degrees dropping out of work; viewed jobs as status threat | Hacker News Reader

Men without college degrees dropping out of work; viewed jobs as status threat

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19 pointsharambae18 comments

Men are dropping out at all levels. Not only are men without degrees dropping out of work, but men are not even attempting to go to university. Women make up 60% of people getting university degrees, and I've read predictions that in about 15 years, it will be up to 70-75%. Right now, there is a quiet affirmative action for men at most universities - men have it way easier to get into universities than women (not counting tier 1 universities). Admissions will take almost any man to even out the sexes to 50/50. But men are not even applying so it doesn't matter.

In a short time, because of knowledge society we live in, women will slowly dominate - judges, lawyers, doctors, congresspeople...everything they want to be. Men will continue to drop out.

Already, I read about women who say they can't find "quality men" meaning men with university degrees in promising careers. Men who make as much as them or more. It's going to get a lot worse.

Tomi Lahren speaks for so many women and how they see men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6QQm6VtOAA

Tomi Lahren is so over-the-top offensive in this video, but she gives voice to what most women think about men, even though most women wouldn't say it like Larhen does. Men hear this stuff all the time from women, but women don't hear anything from men, so they have no idea, totally clueless as to what men think, and because of the monologue that only comes from women.

The view of women saying that men are trash is quite common on the internet.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=men+are+trash&atb=v314-1&ia=web

Men can't say women are trash, it is not allowed. So all men hear in the media, 24/7, is how they are 100% bad. What would happen if a man went off on women like Tomi Lehren did on men?

So men are just dropping out.

Sorry, school is very difficult to stay in as a men, I'm getting at me. Sorry the short message and no explaining.

why is it difficult for you and men, in your opinion?

Are you serious are just mocking me? Also I have a feeling and I don't have scientific evidence.

But to answer your question, I get a lot off shit thrown onto me, unjustified things and I always have to adjust. (Sounds silly and not really a good explanation I know, but it's to difficult to explain right now.)

No, I was 100% NOT mocking you, I really am interested. I'm interested in your feelings about it.

I don't understand your explanation, though. If you could restate it for me, that would be great. Also, it might help you as well to define it more. I think you can explain it comprehensively it if you set your mind to it.

> For people in the 60s and 70s, if you graduated high school, you made it. 80s 90s, college, you made it. Now you need grad school for that, but you need college for that. The bar for what it takes to make a lot of money is moving up as jobs require more.

I (and probably most others here) must be working in fields where grad school isn't needed to make it. I got a bachelor's degree in 2009, and have been living comfortably (in the fourth and fifth income quintiles) since.

It's grade inflation and curriculum dilution. College degrees are being used as a proxy for basic employability because having a highschool diploma no longer imoles that you can read and write, do basic arithmetic or show up to work consistently.

In a lot of IT segments you don't need the paper, you need the skill, especially engineering.

Software "engineers" aren't doing any actual engineering, they're software developers and coders

It seems like the Hackerlariat doesn't account for social status in their anti-college agenda.

Im sure the hyper focus on females getting equal to men and the stereotypical "strong independent who need no man" has something to do with these men's defeatism, in that men are increasingly neglected.

But while we like to think it's down to that reason, it's also very likely that thanks to making these jobs "dead end" through union busting, deregulation, no anti trust, globalization/outsourcing, etc. We've made it increasingly a bad career choice despite it having the possibility of moving working person forward.

Overall I think we're moving in a bad direction with our hyper fixation on materialism (relationship wise), everything is starting to get piled on for what used to be a lot more "humane".

How many of the traditional "hyper-manly" jobs are things villainized by environmentalism or safetyism? The West has an advanced economy built on making sure that everything dirty or dangerous is done in somebody else's backyard.

A few takes on this:

* College degree is just a proxy for people in dead end jobs. This could easily say "Men without yachts..." "Men without country club memberships..." "Men without genius IQs..." etc. "People with dead end jobs dropping out of work" would be a better title.

* This makes sense because these jobs are indeed more dead end than ever. You've been competing with offshoring/globalization for the last 30 years. Now you're also competing with AI/Automation.

* The status threat is also amplified as of late because earnings/wealth is increasingly the only status. It wasn't long ago that being physically strong held status in society. Or having a strong social network. We're pretty close to wealth-is-all-that-matters for social status now. The highest status people in society are dominated by social awkward, physically weak people with high earnings. Lots of this has to do with a decrease in violence (bar fights used to be common - now they're rare and end in court).

* Finally, status has adopted a capitalist winner-take-all dynamics thanks to dating apps and social media. It's now feast or famine in the dating world. Top 1% of men are getting like 50% of the attention from women on apps and even in the real world - women are less available because the guy at the bar is competing with the guy on bumble.

You write, "The highest status people in society are dominated by social awkward, physically weak people with high earnings." The socially awkward may earn increasingly higher salaries, but this does not necessarily confer status upon them.

You downplay athleticism (ie, health) and "strong social networks". But it's precisely those groups who still tend to dominate the socially awkward in status games. An autistic FAANG engineer does not have higher status than an executive or successful salesman.

Going through your comment history, I see you're in sales. I'm sure you'd recognize that status is much more complex than a single variable such as net worth or IQ.

I think that you are too narrowly re-defining the point that BlueTie was trying to get accross.

If you look at society as a whole, the tech field dominates in large numbers when it comes to higher paying jobs.

Nobody is saying that professional athletes don't get paid a boatload, or that entertainers can be paid astronomical amounts. But the reality is that there a maximum of 450 NBA players in the NBA, for example, and only the tippy top of them get the massive dollars.

But also, the entire NBA earned $6.41 billion in 2020/2021 season. By comparison, one single company, Apple, earned $394 billion in 2022.

It's the same with executives. While some execs have high social status, you pretty much have to be at a C-suite level. Nobody cares about some mid-level exec. And C-suite is fairly much anomolous. In 2022, Apple has 164,000 employees, but only one CEO. When looking at entire job classes, technical workers predominate over all other jobs in terms of dollars earned. An autistic FAANG doesn't have higher status than an executive, but then again, he doesn't have higher status than the receptionist at the front desk. However, an average tech has high status, comparatively speaking.

Status is clearly complex for sure, but despite what people say, generalizing is just fine, as long as it's within parameters (which I'm not going to define). And tech people have way more cachet than they did 40 years ago, for example.

Why would people participate in a rigged/losing game like that? Dropping out is rational.

> Wu said marriage market anxiety for younger male workers is likely the prime reason for leaving the workforce when their social status declines.

Weird that this claim gets marked as "prime reason" and the other followup reasons are given an actual percent. I guess this is because it's the "reservation wage" [0] argument but instead of the general explanation given that a previously 6-figure SWE doesn't want to accept a 5-figure fry-flipping job it's presented as a 6-figure SWE thinks fry-flipping will make them unattractive? BLS actually has a nice chart showing poll results for why prime-aged men are not working and "Other" is maybe 6% (dwarfed by ill/disabled at 56%).

> In addition to that, she said, 30% of prime-age men who left the workforce reported disability conditions at the time of their exits.

I guess non-college degree jobs are too physically demanding of their workforce.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ccf_201...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33900041 ("Why did so many US men quit working? Social status may hold the key, study says")

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