Why men are not earning more

“And it all starts at age 25,” Mr. Guvenen said. The decline in lifetime earnings is largely a result of lower incomes at younger ages rather than at older ages, he said, and “that was very surprising to us.”

Most younger men ended up with less because they started out earning less than their counterparts in previous years, and saw little growth in their early years. They entered the work force with lower wages and never caught up.

That is from a very good NYT piece by Patricia Cohen.  And note that in spite of all the recent very good economic news, for men the basic story really hasn’t changed, namely that of stagnation as a class.

I wonder sometimes if a Malthusian/Marxian story might be at work here.  At relevant margins, perhaps it is always easier to talk/pay a woman to do a quality hour’s additional work than to talk/pay a man to do the same.  And so as the demand for such additional hours opens up, the gains go to women, not men.  That is at least for the lower income brackets, and perhaps the very most for younger earners.  In other words, especially at young ages, women might be serving as a kind of “reserve army of the underemployed.”