More work, fewer lonely men?

Exploring the tie between employment and social connection

The book I’m currently reading, The Lonely Century, confirms the link between work and loneliness. People who aren’t working are lonelier than people who are.

The link between loneliness and employment gets even more interesting, to me at least, when we look at the demographics of loneliness.

Basically, there’s a lot of overlap between who’s most lonely and who’s not working.

For instance, women are less socially isolated than men on average. Now, female labor participation rates are about 10 points lower than male. But, look at the trends since 1950:

Single men are especially at risk for both social isolation and reported loneliness. And guess what correlates with being single, especially for men? Not having a jobby job my babies.

According to The Lonely Century, older people are the loneliest, on average. But young people are also…