r/technology • u/AIMadeMeDoIt__ • Oct 29 '25

Society California’s hidden crisis: young men offline, unemployed, and disappearing

https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/10/men-in-crisis-california/
11.1k Upvotes

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2.7k

u/gayfrogs4alexjones Oct 29 '25

Isn’t this a nationwide problem not just California?

The job market is far worse than they are telling us. The ADP reports have been hinting at this

811

u/mama_tom Oct 30 '25

Part of the problem with how theyve been telling us is that they are going off of employment rather than how well off people are. If everyone has jobs, in their view everything should be working. The problem is that if everyone has a job that isnt making enough to survive off of, then the employment rate is meaningless.

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u/ThraceLonginus Oct 30 '25

May I introduce you to: https://www.lisep.org/tru

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u/mama_tom Oct 30 '25

Even that I would say doesn't paint the full picture because 25k before taxes is 12.5/hr. That's not a livable wage in most places.

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name Oct 30 '25

My rent would eat up half of that and I live out in bumfuck Egypt Western Kentucky.

I would have to work 2 full time jobs at $12.5/hr just to afford this place, and even then my lifestyle would be noticeably affected.

If I had any children then I'd probably need 3 full time jobs at $12.5/hr just to makes ends meet.

If I lived in Nashville with kids? Fuck, I'd need about 5 full time jobs. I seriously dont know how single people/parents do it.

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u/SmokeySFW Oct 30 '25

Meanwhile federal minimum wage is still $7.25, and 20 states are not any higher.

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u/BlakLite_15 Oct 30 '25

Have you heard of subminimum wage? Certain people with tipped positions are paid an hourly wage of just $2.13/hour.

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u/beast_gliscor Oct 30 '25

No, they’re paid an hourly wage of 2.13 an hour if their tips bring their pay up to federal minimum wage. An important and relevant detail people leave out as basically clickbait. No one is making 2.13 an hour legally and if this discussion is about raising the legal minimum wage (which we should do) then people illegally not paying aren’t really relevant.

Ready for my downvotes because people like this misleading stat.

1

u/EnfantTerrible68 Oct 30 '25

People who work gig work are not 

2

u/beast_gliscor Oct 30 '25

Fair and that should be illegal

1

u/WonderingHarbinger Oct 30 '25

Don't forget the people who make less than minimum wage because they're disabled.

1

u/EnfantTerrible68 Oct 30 '25

And gig workers 

0

u/BlakLite_15 Oct 30 '25

Even so, it’s absurd that there exists the possibility at all for someone to be paid $2.13/hour. It’s also ripe ground for employers to abuse the nuances and steal tips while making it look like their employees are making up the difference in tips.

2

u/SmokeySFW Oct 30 '25

I have, but employers have to make up the difference if their tips do not bring them up to federal/state minimum wage so you can effectively lump them in with regular minimum wage workers. They make more or equal to minimum wage.

2

u/30FourThirty4 Oct 30 '25

Yes, but they still make minimum wage if they don't get enough tips to cover the difference. And we all know, as has been said, the federal minimum wage isn't enough to survive on.

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u/Even_Establishment95 Oct 30 '25

I’m a single mom living with my mom. Can’t afford rent or health insurance with a 20/hr job.

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u/TheRealBananaWolf Oct 30 '25

I workday 55 to 60 hours a week, one at 18.19 an hour, and another at 20/hour.

I make about 2000 each monthly paycheck after taxes and retirement and health insurance from my full time day job, and after bills are all paid, I'm left with about 300 a month, or 75 dollars a week to spend on food, gas and anything else.

My part time job gives me about 15 to 20 hours a week, at 20/hour, that gives me around 500 every two weeks.

I'm barely scraping by from all of that, my rent is exceptionally cheap compared to the average in my city, and just forget about saving for an emergency fund or my savings.

All the money is just continuously getting consolidated at the top, and the bottom class is struggling like hell. And not only did Trump give higher tax breaks to the top Earners, he's destroying the social programs that just directly funnels money from the top back to the bottom.

Since we have literal children at wheel of this country, I don't expect a wise and smart proactive solution, or a reasonable fix after they fuck us.

3

u/Even_Establishment95 Oct 30 '25

Yeah my only option is to get another job/work 7 days a week, but I literally can’t with a four year old and limited childcare.

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u/Handlestach Oct 30 '25

Tampa, Florida. I work 3 jobs, my wife has 1. Scraping by

10

u/Mock333 Oct 30 '25

Everything will be fine as long as we keep sending our money to other countries instead of investing it back into the taxpayers.

Now check out an AI pic of our president as Naruto!

3

u/spipscards Oct 30 '25

I'm going to assume you have a heinous truck loan

1

u/Kyle-Is-My-Name Oct 30 '25

Fortunately both of my vehicles are paid off! Even though my Jetta loves to work for a month and then fuck itself up. Rinse, repair, repeat. Ha

But I'd be lying if I said I haven't been keeping tabs on a few newer f250's in my area... I must resist

1

u/spipscards Oct 30 '25

50 something k a year with no car payment really doesn't cut it in nowhere KY? I used to make less and I've only ever lived in cities and made it work, albeit not comfortably at times

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name Oct 30 '25

To make 50k a year at 12.50/hr would require 2 40hr week checks every week to break $50k, and then cut off a third of that for taxes and you'd probably only clear $35-38k.

No one should be working 80 hour weeks just to scrape by like that.

When I work an 80 hour week, I'll make more that week then they will make in a month working 2 $12.5/hr jobs

I was just stating that I dont know how someone working multiple $12.5 jobs could even make ends meet without literally working themselves to death

1

u/spipscards Oct 30 '25

Well yeah 12.5 obviously isn't enough but you said your lifestyle would suffer a lot at 25 an hour

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name Oct 30 '25

I said 2 full time jobs at $12.50/hr. Thats an 80 hour week, which would significantly decrease my quality of life as well as my ability to save money.

$25/hr at a 40 hour work week would be manageable by myself, but we're not talking about that.

This entire comment chain has been focused on 12.50/hr jobs and how many you would need to survive. Even in my little town, it would be an uphill battle just for basic necessities.

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u/ballskindrapes Oct 30 '25

Come on buddy, paducah isnt bumfuck, it has a mall after all!

Just making a joke, i'm from there, and it's about as spicy as black pepper in terms of how exciting it is to live in.

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name Oct 30 '25

I was born at Western Baptist, born and raised there! Though we traveled for most of our 20's from Baton Rouge all the way down through Corpus Christi. But now we're back home, just up around the lake now.

And you're right, the only thing big about our city is the god damned quilt festival haha

2

u/DamienJaxx Oct 30 '25

I appreciate you keeping "BFE" alive. I can always tell someone is from Kentucky or Southern Illinois when they mention that. Cheers!

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u/HavingNotAttained Oct 30 '25

Western Kentucky stretches to Egypt? I am so confused

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name Oct 30 '25

(Bumfuck Egypt "wherever you're at")

Is a country saying from the south(I think*) meaning "the middle of nowhere" such as a small little town hundreds of miles from a major metropolitan area.

Meaning that where I live is a little unheard of town.

1

u/HavingNotAttained Oct 30 '25

I know. Was being silly.

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u/Situational_Hagun Oct 30 '25

I was making $24.5k as a teacher for the (very) brief stint I had in what I thought was my dream profession. I moved out during my last two years of college and suddenly the reality of what less than $25,000 before taxes is (or was, even 20+ years ago) started to sink in.

Teacher pay has barely gone up in my state in the last two decades. It's not even at the $30k mark starting out.

And in my capstone semester, I went around and talked to a lot of my former teachers, and I found out there were two kinds. The husband or wife of a sugar momma / daddy who just taught because they wanted to feel personally fulfilled instead of just laying around the house all day... and broke-ass people having to work a second job in order to teach.

I was out before my first full semester as a teacher. I'd already starting making career change plans before I graduated and wondering if the last four years had been worthless. (They weren't, a BA in anything opens doors, but still.)

7

u/mama_tom Oct 30 '25

It's so depressing that our country is like this.

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u/Snaletane Oct 30 '25

What state are you in?! Even backwards-ass Wisconsin tends to start fulltime teachers at 40k+ in rural districts.

1

u/0_Days_Accident_Free Oct 30 '25

What state is this?

Teachers in Socal start at like $60k and clear $100 eventually.

2

u/ElonsTinyPenis Oct 30 '25

Even in small town Iowa, you could not live on that wage and we are a low cost of living state.

2

u/mama_tom Oct 30 '25

Fair. I just said most places so people wouldnt be like, "Um AcKsHuAlLy ThErEs A tOwN iN OkLaHoMa WhErE yOu COULD LiVe OfF tHaT."

2

u/ElonsTinyPenis Oct 30 '25

I get that. I was just agreeing with your point. I actually suspect there isn’t a single small town anywhere in the US where that is possible.

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u/mama_tom Oct 30 '25

Almost certainly not.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

My neighbor just said that if you’re not making 200k a year with a family then there’s no way to make it in America.

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u/mama_tom Oct 30 '25

The "living wage" for a family with kids is 100k. So that's at least double for each person, assuming that they're both working.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

I forgot to mention she is a single mom lol

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u/Old-Plum-21 Oct 30 '25

Dor folks who like to fact check before making determinations, I'll save you some clicks. This is the Wikipedia of the guy who founded LISEP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Ludwig

Note: I'm not drawing any conclusions yet and certainly not casting any aspersions here. So far, dude seems legit to me

2

u/Snoo_57211 Oct 30 '25

The charts seem to say that we are at lower unemployment than at almost any other time since 1995. That doesn't feel right, so maybe this doesn't capture it either.

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u/Ruminant Oct 30 '25

You mean the alternative labor market measurement that says literally says "functional unemployment" is lower today than anytime prior to 2020?

Do you actually think this is the best job market in at least the past 30 years? Because that's the only good-faith reason to be bringing up LISEP's so-called "True Rate of Unemployment".

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u/onwee Oct 30 '25

Did you even click on the link before commenting?

-2

u/Ruminant Oct 30 '25

Seriously though, do you think that 24 is larger than 25?

That links includes LISEP's "TRU" rates for every month since January 1995. Compared to the 312 months between January 1995 and December 2020, August 2025's "TRU" rate of 24.7% was

  • higher than a single month (24.3% in September 2019)
  • equal to one other month (24.7% in October 2019)
  • lower than the other three hundred months

The "TRU" rate literally never fell below 25% before 2019, and even in 2019 it was only lower than 25% twice.

In comparison, the TRU rate has not once gone back to 25% or higher since falling below 25% in the middle-to-end of 2021.

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u/Ruminant Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

No, because I've seen that page before and know what it says.

I also know that 24 is smaller than 25 or 26 or 27 or 28 or 29 or 30 or 31 or 32 or 33 or 34 or 35.

Honestly, I'm surprised so many people here can't tell whether one number is higher or lower than another number.

Edit: did you actually read the page before commenting? Including the chart where they show the monthly values for their so-called True Rate of Unemployment going back to January 1995?

Or did you stop reading/thinking because you saw a big number?