I think that Robert Samuelson has this issue almost completely backwards. From his Washington Post column:
The work ethic is such a central part of the American character that it’s hard to imagine it fading. But that’s what seems to be happening in one important part of the labor force. Among men 25 to 54 — so-called prime-age male workers — about 1 in 8 are dropouts. They don’t have a job and, unlike the officially unemployed, aren’t looking for one. They number about 7 million.
Just what role, if any, these nonworking men played in Donald Trump’s election is unclear. What’s not unclear is that these dropouts, after being ignored for years, have suddenly become a hot topic of scholarly study and political debate. There’s been a sea change. In the mid-1960s, only 1 in 29 prime-age male workers was a dropout. The explosion of dropouts strikes many observers as dire.
He goes on to suggest that some large number of unemployed men are either slackers or too injured to work:
Any debate may turn on whether dropouts are “shirkers†(able-bodied men avoiding work) or “victims†(workers left behind by disability or bad luck). There’s evidence of both. Eberstadt cites surveys that only 15 percent of dropouts “stated they were unemployed because they could not find work.†Other surveys indicate that dropouts spend about eight hours a day “socializing, relaxing and leisure†— watching TV, playing video games or just hanging out.
But nearly half of male dropouts report taking pain pills every day, according to a study by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger. Two-fifths of respondents said their disabilities prevented them “from working on a full-time job for which they [were] qualified.†Male dropouts report they are “less happy, more sad, and more stressed†than workers or the unemployed. In a society that worships the work ethic, being a labor-force dropout is often a ticket to misery.
Closer to the truth I think is that there are too few jobs available at decent wages and the long-term unemployed know it, disability insurance has become the unemployment insurance of last resort, and that a huge number of the people who work actually meet the criteria for disability.
