(Radio Iowa) – An analysis by an Iowa-based think tank has found the percentage of working age men who have a job or are looking for work is falling faster in Iowa than in the country as a whole. Ben Murrey — director of policy and research at the Common Sense Institute — says it’s a significant, but under-recognized challenge in Iowa’s economy. The group’s report — titled “Where are the men?” — shows things like marital status and whether a man has a college degree appear to be factors.

“Iowa men ages 25-54 — prime working age — with less than an associates degree are 39% less likely to participate in the labor force compared with those with higher educations,” he says. “The average never married man is 51% less likely to be in the labor force than a married man.” Working age Iowa men who live with a relative are 61 percent less likely to be employed compared to men who are the head of their household.

Iowa has historically had a higher percent of working age men AND women in the labor market compared to the nation as a whole. “But in the last five decades — really 47 years over the time period we looked at from 1977 to 2024, prime working age male labor force participation rate in Iowa has declined at 6.5 percentage points,” he said. That is a deeper drop than in the nation as a whole. The data in the report comes from the U-S Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Murrey says it shows there’s been a three percent drop in the number of men in the Iowa workforce compared to 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic started. “That translates to a $10 billion annual reduction in economic output and GDP. It translates to a $4 billion decline in statewide personal income,” Murrey says, “so these labor force shifts are having a really big impact on Iowa’s economy.”

The Common Sense Institute report shows about one in five Iowa men who are working are employed in the manufacturing sector, however about 40 percent of all initial unemployment claims last year came from men working in manufacturing.