At every age, the chances of not working have changed in the last 15 years. Teenagers are far more likely not to work. Older people are retiring later and working more. In the ages in between — the periods of life when most people work — the changes have been smaller, but they are still substantial.

In the late 1960s, almost all men between the ages of 25 and 54 went to work. Only about 5 out of every 100 did not have a job in any given week. By 2000, this figure had more than doubled, to 11 out of every 100 men. This year, it’s 16. (People in the military, prison and institutions are excluded from these figures.)

Of course, the economy was stronger in 2000 than it is today, with a lower official unemployment rate — the share of people not working and actively looking for work — than today. But for prime-age men, the rise in official unemployment explains only about one-third of the increase in not working.

The remaining two-thirds is made up of those who are not working and not looking for work. Every month, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics ask these men who are not in the labor force to describe their situation. Are they disabled, ill, in school, taking care of house or family, in retirement, or something else? Here are the trends within some of the larger of those categories:

School

About 13 percent of the increase in prime-age nonworkers, including a substantial fraction of the younger ones, comes among people who say they are in school.

To the extent that rising nonwork reflects more men graduating from school, that’s good news. Male high school graduation rates have risen 5 percentage points since 2000, and people with more education earn more and are less likely to be disabled later in life. But much of the school-related rise in nonwork, at least since 2007, appears to be less about staying in school than it is about not being able to find part-time jobs.

Some men in school say they would like to be working part time but they’ve given up looking for a job. Others may stop going to school entirely if they could find a job, or if the college wage premium were smaller.

Taking care of home or family

Men who identify as homemakers remain relatively rare, but they are about twice as common as they were in 2000.

Disability

About 20 percent of the new nonworkers say they are disabled, a category whose numbers have risen particularly for workers above age 50.

Once people have a disability and neither have a job nor are looking for one, it’s unlikely they will work again. Less than 10 percent of the prime-age nonworkers who say that they have a disability will be in the labor force one year later, according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Instead, most of those who receive disability benefits will do so until they reach retirement age or die.

Retirement

Among prime-age workers, early retirement has increased slightly since 2000. Far more drastic changes have occured among workers 55 and older, who have been doing the opposite and putting off retirement.

The decline of traditional pension plans and rising education levels, which are associated with less physically demanding jobs, may both help explain why the elderly are working longer.

The full retirement age for Social Security benefits also began gradually increasing in 2000.

Some countries have developed policies that encourage older people to leave the labor force, so they do not “crowd out” younger workers. But studies across countries and time suggest that crowding-out may not actually be a problem. Economies do not appear to have a fixed number of jobs. When more older people are working, they are earning money that they will then spend in ways that may create more jobs for young people, for example.

Even if this is the case, though, the rise of elderly employment in recent years has not provided enough of a lift to put more young people back to work.

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