Fewer men in rural Wisconsin participating in the workforce, citing lack of respect on the job

Men are dropping out of the workforce at alarming rates in part because of feeling a loss of dignity in traditional jobs, according to new studies. 

A study that surveyed dozens of men from rural Wisconsin found they often have a strong sense of self-worth and think of themselves as hardworking. But some men feel they aren’t being recognized for that hard work or skill set in the traditional workforce. 

A lead researcher on the study, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, who’s a professor in the School of Human Ecology and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at the end of the day, people want to feel like the work they’re doing is meaningful. 

“That meaning can come from the relationships that you have with your boss and your coworkers or from looking back on the work that you’ve done and feeling like you’ve contributed something,” she said. 

“That feeling was sometimes hard to come by with many of the job opportunities that were available to (the men surveyed),” she continued. “If you’re going to tighten a certain piece on a factory floor 7,000 times every shift, that needs more support to feel like you’re really contributing to something larger than yourself.” 

On WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” Halpern-Meekin spoke about why men are leaving the workforce, employment challenges in rural Wisconsin and the role of education in job opportunities.

The following was edited for brevity and clarity. 

Kate Archer Kent: One of the men you spoke with, Grant, said he was let go from a dairy farm after years because he lacked a specialized degree. How is education a predictor of men seeking work?

Sarah Halpern-Meekin: We’ve seen a starker decline in labor force participation for prime-age men, those 25 to 54 years old, who have the lowest levels of education, less than a high school degree. We’ve seen some decline for men with a high school degree. And those declines have been starker than what we’ve seen for men with a college degree.

KAK: What effect does the gig economy have on these men who are out of the formal workforce? 

SHM: Often, when we talk about the gig economy, we think about somebody driving for Lyft or Uber or DoorDash or something like that. Those are not options in rural areas the way they are for people living in urban areas.

And so the kind of gig work that we saw people picking up looked a lot more like stuff that’s been around for a long time — raking leaves, finding side construction jobs and picking up that job and working for cash under the table.

KAK: You write about men thinking of formal work as an assault on their dignity. How would you describe the sense of dignity that you found in these men?

SHM: They felt like they should be treated OK on the job, and that they shouldn’t be disrespected and shown a real disregard for what they contributed on the job. It’s not that they didn’t value work. It’s that they valued their hard work and they wanted their bosses and their coworkers to similarly respect them on the job. 

One man we talked to talked about having severely injured his arm on the job. And when he paged his boss to say he got hurt, she didn’t respond for hours and then eventually he was told to just head home. And nobody, nobody checked on him. It’s those kinds of things. It’s about being shown care like you matter, you have value at work — the sort of things that most of us would want to receive on the job.

KAK: What could employers take away from your research and how could they convince men to rejoin the labor force? 

SHM: The conversation has really been about pay and benefits, and I certainly don’t disregard those things. Those things matter, right? They matter because they’re compensation.

But the other way that they matter is they’re a show of respect for somebody. To pay a long-time worker less than you pay a new worker, that matters because of the dollars and cents but it also matters because it can be felt as a sign of disrespect for the seniority and skills that somebody is bringing to the job. 

So, thinking about how employees are treated, what respect are they shown, what sense are they given that they are part of a larger mission? And not just talking the talk, but walking the walk. Having the pay and benefits, the opportunities for promotion, the responsibility and power on the job and the autonomy that people have over their work to back up those statements. It’s not just saying, “Yes, we value everyone here,” but thinking about how you show that way of valuing all of your employees.