Study finds young men are playing video games instead of getting jobs
Study finds young men are playing video games instead of getting jobs
Danny Izquierdo, a 22-year-old who lives with his parents in Silver Spring, Md., has found little satisfaction in a series of part-time, low-wage jobs he's held since graduating from high school. But the video games he plays, including "FIFA 16" and "Rocket League" on PlayStation and Pokemon Go on his smartphone, are a different story.
"When I play a game, I know if I have a few hours I will be rewarded," he said. "With a job, it's always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward."
Izquierdo represents a group of video-game-loving Americans who, according to new research, may help explain one of the most alarming aspects of the nation's economic recovery: Even as the unemployment rate has fallen to low levels, an unusually large percentage of able-bodied men, particularly the young and less-educated, are either not working or not working full-time.
Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men — who don't have college degrees — are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games. The decision may not even be completely conscious, but surveys suggest that young men are happier for it.
"Happiness has gone up for this group, despite employment percentages having fallen, and the percentage living with parents going up. And that's different than for any other group," says the University of Chicago's Erik Hurst, an economist at the Booth School of Business who helped lead the research.
While young men might temporarily enjoy a life of leisure, the implications could be troubling for them as well as the economy. The young men aren't gaining job experience that will better equip them to work in their 30s and 40s. That, in turn, could lead to a lifetime of decreased wages, limited opportunities and challenges such as depression and drug use — problems that the United States is already seeing in areas hit with heavy job losses.
At the same time, if a historically vibrant portion of the population doesn't feel as much desire to work, this could harm the economy's future and the ability of government to use policy to create jobs. "That's a big chunk of labor that could be used for something, and we're not using it," said Greg Kaplan, an economist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the new research.
As of last year, 22 percent of men between the ages of 21 and 30 with less than a bachelor's degree reported not working at all in the previous year — up from only 9.5 percent in 2000. Overall, only 88 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are working or looking for work, the third-lowest among 34 developed countries, according to the White House's Council of Economic Advisers.
Young men without college degrees have replaced 75 percent of the time they used to spend working with time on the computer, mostly playing video games, according to the study, which is based on the Census Bureau's time-use surveys. Before the recession, from 2004 to 2007, young, unemployed men without college degrees were spending 3.4 hours per week playing video games. By 2011 to 2014, that time had shot up to 8.6 hours per week on average.
More-educated young men have ratcheted up their gaming time, too — but this group has an easier time finding good jobs, and so their work hours haven't fallen as much. The trends are different for women, who are much more likely to go back to school after leaving the labor force.
The researchers are not merely saying that young men, out of work, are turning to video games. They're saying that increasingly sophisticated video games are luring young men away from the workforce. To determine this, the researchers analyzed changes in how people were allocating their time to leisure, and ran statistical tests that they say show that technological improvements are pushing people to spend much more time playing video games. That, in turn, is changing people's trade-offs about when to work and when to play.
Study finds young men are playing video games instead of getting jobs
Danny Izquierdo, a 22-year-old who lives with his parents in Silver Spring, Md., has found little satisfaction in a series of part-time, low-wage jobs he's held since graduating from high school. But the video games he plays, including "FIFA 16" and "Rocket League" on PlayStation and Pokemon Go on his smartphone, are a different story.
"When I play a game, I know if I have a few hours I will be rewarded," he said. "With a job, it's always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward."
Izquierdo represents a group of video-game-loving Americans who, according to new research, may help explain one of the most alarming aspects of the nation's economic recovery: Even as the unemployment rate has fallen to low levels, an unusually large percentage of able-bodied men, particularly the young and less-educated, are either not working or not working full-time.
Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men — who don't have college degrees — are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games. The decision may not even be completely conscious, but surveys suggest that young men are happier for it.
"Happiness has gone up for this group, despite employment percentages having fallen, and the percentage living with parents going up. And that's different than for any other group," says the University of Chicago's Erik Hurst, an economist at the Booth School of Business who helped lead the research.
While young men might temporarily enjoy a life of leisure, the implications could be troubling for them as well as the economy. The young men aren't gaining job experience that will better equip them to work in their 30s and 40s. That, in turn, could lead to a lifetime of decreased wages, limited opportunities and challenges such as depression and drug use — problems that the United States is already seeing in areas hit with heavy job losses.
At the same time, if a historically vibrant portion of the population doesn't feel as much desire to work, this could harm the economy's future and the ability of government to use policy to create jobs. "That's a big chunk of labor that could be used for something, and we're not using it," said Greg Kaplan, an economist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the new research.
As of last year, 22 percent of men between the ages of 21 and 30 with less than a bachelor's degree reported not working at all in the previous year — up from only 9.5 percent in 2000. Overall, only 88 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are working or looking for work, the third-lowest among 34 developed countries, according to the White House's Council of Economic Advisers.
Young men without college degrees have replaced 75 percent of the time they used to spend working with time on the computer, mostly playing video games, according to the study, which is based on the Census Bureau's time-use surveys. Before the recession, from 2004 to 2007, young, unemployed men without college degrees were spending 3.4 hours per week playing video games. By 2011 to 2014, that time had shot up to 8.6 hours per week on average.
More-educated young men have ratcheted up their gaming time, too — but this group has an easier time finding good jobs, and so their work hours haven't fallen as much. The trends are different for women, who are much more likely to go back to school after leaving the labor force.
The researchers are not merely saying that young men, out of work, are turning to video games. They're saying that increasingly sophisticated video games are luring young men away from the workforce. To determine this, the researchers analyzed changes in how people were allocating their time to leisure, and ran statistical tests that they say show that technological improvements are pushing people to spend much more time playing video games. That, in turn, is changing people's trade-offs about when to work and when to play.
