On several occasions, I have talked about the fact that a significant percentage of young men are not in the workforce, and many of them aren’t even looking for work. Caroline Downey argues in a recent column that their exit from the workforce really wasn’t voluntary. The Wall Street Journal reports, “American women now hold 176,000 more payroll jobs than American men.” Why is that?

First, she points to the DEI policies in many companies. Many firms had either an official policy or an unofficial gender and/or race requirement. For example, the NASDAQ requires companies to publicly disclose whether they have at least two directors who are minorities, including one self-identified as a female.

No wonder many young men in college are frustrated that banks and other financial institutions have been clamoring to fill spots with females, even though they had less impressive applications. These virtue-signals were visible to men still in college or ready to graduate.

Lifting enrollment caps was another issue. The Washington Post explained that “Girls were twice as likely as boys to get into Caltech or MIT, to make up for the fact that they are half as likely to apply.” Today, females make up nearly 60 percent of all college students nationwide.

A third issue is attitude. She laments that colleges are increasingly adopting an ideological tone that treats maleness as problematic. Perhaps that is what is chasing men out of college or even telling them to stay away. Unfortunately, not enough of them are being trained for the more than a million trade jobs the country needs.

It is time to change our policies and attitudes that keep young men from the workforce.