Half a million young Californians aren’t in school or work. Most are men

If you ask Jodeah Wilson how his life got off track, he’ll say it’s all about money.

He needs money for November rent. He also needs money to pay back the tuition he owes for the spring semester at Sacramento State University, which would allow him to re-enroll. Until then, he’s stuck in limbo.

“All I need is a goddamn job so I can pay this off myself,” he said. But it’s been months and so far, he’s still unemployed.

To state leaders and researchers, though, it’s more than just money. California has nearly 500,000 young people ages 16 to 24 who are in the same predicament, neither working nor in school. Finding them a job is part of the solution, but it goes much deeper than that. Many are struggling socially and emotionally, too, making it even harder to move forward.

Men are particularly at risk. In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to address “the alarming rise in suicides and disconnection among California’s young men and boys.”

It’s a “crisis,” Newsom told former President Bill Clinton in an interview at the Clinton Global Initiative last month. “Look at the dropout rates. Look at the depths of despair. Look at the issues around loneliness. Look at every critical category. It's just blinking red lights for young men.”

Newsom pointed to Charlie Kirk as a model for how to make young men feel heard and get them re-engaged politically, albeit for Trump. Then he slammed Democrats for ignoring these young men and their needs.

Wilson is convinced he’s an exception to these trends and that his unemployment is temporary. He talks fast, speaking in short sentences, repeating himself when needed, like a coach hyping up a team. When he gets excited or gestures for emphasis, a dreadlock falls from his bun and shakes with his words.

“I've been persistent,” he said. “You can check Indeed. You can check Glassdoor. You can check my network. You can check how many career fairs I attended, how many internships I've acquired.”

His checking account has $76, and his savings account has 8 cents, he said during an interview earlier this month. Despite his persistence, he’s worried about becoming homeless in November if a job doesn’t materialize soon.

Jodeah Wilson stands for a portrait outside his apartment building near Sac State on Oct. 17, 2025.

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Of the roughly 4.6 million Californians between the ages of 16 and 24, more than 10% are considered disconnected, meaning they’re neither working nor in school, according to Kristen Lewis, the director of the research organization Measure of America. The majority are men, and Black and Native American men have higher rates.

The reasons so many young men drop out of school and work are varied. Economists point to rising automation or the loss of male-dominated manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Some of these men have disabilities or are struggling with addiction or mental health challenges. Many are incarcerated — California’s prisons are 96% male. Most of California’s homeless population is male too.

For Newsom, though, it’s not just about men’s role in the economy or education. In the executive order, he points to a slew of other disturbing statistics:

• Nearly 1 in 4 men under the age of 30 say they have no close friends, a “five-fold increase since 1990” and “with higher rates of disconnection for Black males.”
• Men are four times more likely than women to die by suicide — a disparity that has grown over the past few decades.
• Men also have higher rates of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

Wilson, who is both Black and Native American, said his issues are just a product of the job market. He has been rejected by restaurants, call centers and delivery services over the past two years, representing more than 50 different online job applications on Indeed alone. He’s done some seasonal or temporary work, he said, such as a four-hour catering shift about once a month, but other than that, he’s had little professional luck.

Regardless of the reason, the sole fact that he is neither working nor in school right now could have an impact on his future quality of life, even if he does find a job soon. Lewis, the Measure of America director, pointed to a longitudinal study of young people in similar situations. It found they’re likely to make less money and have worse health outcomes by the time they reach their 30s. The longer a person is unemployed and out of school, she said, the greater the likelihood of long-term consequences.

No car and no financial aid

In one of Wilson’s communications classes at Sac State, a professor compared adulthood to the experience of climbing a rope, where every responsibility or misfortune is a knife, cutting off those who are too weak to climb any higher.

Wilson said he feels like he’s at the bottom of the rope and about to get cut off.

He started Sac State in the spring of 2024 with $20,000 in his bank account, money that he’d saved by working at Red Robin while attending community college. But one year later, he had spent most of it.

Jodeah Wilson waits at a red light while driving his new car through Sacramento on Oct. 17, 2025. When his previous car broke down, he kept it a secret from his father for months because he was determined to figure out the situation on his own.

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In January, Wilson was driving southbound on I-5 from his hometown of Redding toward Sac State, ready to start the spring semester. Near Arbuckle, he noticed the temperature gauge on his 2002 Honda Accord suddenly swung right. The car was slowing down, even though his foot was still on the gas. He pulled over to the breakdown lane and watched steam pour from the hood. By the time he had towed the car to a mechanic, it was too late, he said — part of the engine had melted.

Without a car, he struggled to find a job, he said. His grades started to slip, too. "I needed to stop focusing on school and focus instead on how the hell I'm going to get this rent and tuition paid.”

For Lewis, who has long studied the struggles that young people face, it’s everyday setbacks — a broken car, failing grades — that often set someone on the path to dropping out of school or abandoning the workforce. “Young people who are out of school and out of work basically need what all young people need,” she said. “They need guidance. They need help. They need understanding. They need a chance to try and fail and try again.”

California offers generous financial aid for the majority of students enrolled at California State University campuses, covering tuition and daily living costs such as food and housing, but Wilson doesn’t qualify. Although he’s 22, he’s still considered a child for the purposes of financial aid, and his father, who owns a construction company, and his father’s new wife, a paralegal, collectively make too much money for him to qualify for state or federal aid, he said.

Jodeah Wilson sits on his bed while using his laptop in his off-campus apartment on Oct. 17, 2025.

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Photos by Felix Uribe for CalMatters/Catchlight

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Photos by Felix Uribe for CalMatters/Catchlight

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Academic degrees from community college hang on the bedroom wall of Wilson’s off-campus apartment.

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Felix Uribe

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Wilson’s father helped out a little over the spring semester, sending a few hundred dollars to his bank account when funds were low, but the major costs, such as rent and tuition, have always been Wilson’s sole responsibility. He’s proud of that.

“(My father) supports me where it's necessary, but in other aspects of my life, he shouldn't, because I'm a man. I'm supposed to kind of do what I got to do,” said Wilson. Though he finished the spring semester, he owes over $4,000 in missed tuition payments, which he has to pay before he can re-enroll.

Ten years of depression, never seeking help

If you ask Will Rose how his life got off track, he’ll say it’s all about mental health.

After dropping out of college 10 years ago, Rose, now 29, always thought he might return, though he never did. He worked retail jobs, mostly for Target, while living at his father’s house in Hermosa Beach. In retrospect, he said he was often depressed, though he wasn’t conscious of it at the time.

At night after working a shift or in the middle of the day, during one of his stints of unemployment, Rose would drive around the corner to the 7-Eleven and return home with a Big Gulp, Cheetos or Takis. “Anything that would overload my senses," he said.

Over the course of 10 years, he gained more than 60 pounds. When he felt stuck, he would buzz off all his hair as a way to regain control over his body and his life.

Will Rose takes a long walk around his neighborhood to support his mental health in San Pedro on Oct. 16, 2025. The 29-year-old has been struggling to find a sense of community, which has left him feeling lonely.

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As a follow-up to Newsom’s executive order, state agencies submitted a 75-page document outlining the work they’re doing to support young men. The mental health team at California Health and Human Services highlighted a federally funded project run by the state, which helped set up nearly 250 billboards in all of California’s major cities featuring the faces of young men, looking hopeful or determined. Next to each face is the 9-8-8 suicide and crisis number. The goal is to help men see that “it’s OK to not feel OK, and it's OK to ask for help,” said Ahn Bui, a project director at the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Her colleague at the agency, Stephanie Welch, added that most mental health professionals are female, which makes it even harder for some men to feel welcome in a therapist’s office. Nationally, suicide is a leading cause of death among men ages 15 to 44 — with more men dying by suicide than cancer, heart disease or homicide. Yet men are less likely to seek treatment for mental health issues than women, Bui said.

Men are also more likely to use drugs and to overdose.

Last year, Rose was working as a contractor, delivering packages for Amazon part time. When he wasn’t working, he was using meth. When the high was good, he felt invincible, infallible, he said, even if he was just sitting on his couch. But when it was bad, he would watch hours of porn.

Once, he spent two full days so high that he couldn’t sleep. He was alone in his room, he said — his thoughts were racing so fast that he couldn’t recognize who he was or that he was even human. His dad was still in the house, though Rose said he felt so “dystopian” that he didn’t even know he needed help. “I was seriously suicidal. I was seriously going to end it.”

In May 2024, Rose admitted himself to a psychiatric ward near downtown Los Angeles.

What's happening to 'prime-age' men?

As a child, Rose was in foster care and lived in roughly 25 different homes, including some where he said he was sexually abused, repeatedly. He only remembers a few of the homes, he said; the rest are a blur. Mostly, he remembers getting adopted at age 10 and moving to his first permanent home in Hermosa Beach.

Sitting in the silence of his hospital room in the psychiatric ward last year, and in the months that followed, Rose said he began to reflect on the impact of his childhood trauma. Bui, a psychiatrist by training, prefers to use the clinical term, “adverse childhood experiences,” to describe what Rose has gone through. Sexual abuse, for instance, is linked to mental health challenges and substance use issues later in life, she said.

This summer, with help from his father, Rose got a new car and finally moved into his own apartment in San Pedro, just a few blocks from the Los Angeles Harbor, as he continued working for Amazon. In his spare time, he began going on short meditative walks.

Will Rose is wrestling with loneliness, a feeling many men across the country are increasingly experiencing.

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Zaydee Sanchez

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He said the palm trees and flowers remind him of the beauty that still exists. Oct. 16, 2025.

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But soon after moving, he lost his job. “I was cutting corners,” he acknowledged, marking packages as delivered so he could leave work a few minutes early. “With everything being AI-based, they just keep track of everything you do. They’re just so strict.”

At 29, Rose is what economists consider a “prime-age man,” meaning that he’s in the peak age for employment. Since the 1960s, the number of prime age men opting out of the labor force has grown, especially among those without college degrees, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. It’s unprecedented, Newsom said in his executive order.

Beyond the usual labor market explanations, such as automation, researchers have analyzed other potential trends. Some point to family dynamics, such as the rising number of men who are living with a parent or serving as caretakers.

One 2017 study found a link between the advent of new and improved video games and the decline in men’s working hours. Today, the average non-working man spends 520 hours a year on “recreational computer time,” most of it video games. For comparison, the average employee works about 2,000 hours a year.

State agency officials say they’re leading a series of education, health and career initiatives aimed at men, including using money from Proposition 1, a state mental health bond that passed last year, to increase the pipeline of male therapists. Last month, Newsom said his office is starting a $5 million grant program to create more mentorship opportunities for young men.

What causes a person to leave school or work varies, and so do the solutions for bringing them back, said Lewis, with Measure of America. “There tends to be a desire for some sort of silver bullet,” she said, such as summer jobs programs or employment assistance.

“I mean, it's great to get someone a job, but if someone has a traumatic upbringing, and is dealing with a substance use disorder and has mental health challenges, they need other kinds of support.”

‘I feel like I can pick myself up back on my feet’

Now unemployed again, Rose walks several times a day, at all hours. On good days, he wakes up at 6 a.m., puts his phone in a drawer and starts his morning walk. A few blocks from his house is a greenway lined with palm trees that stretches along the water, where he walks for about 10 minutes, ambling slowly, passing markers along the way: a Swedish church, a homeless shelter, a rehabilitation center.

Seeing the rehabilitation center is a relief, he said. “If shit ever hits the fan, I have something to fall back on.”

Will Rose finds moments of stillness by the waterfront in San Pedro on Oct. 16, 2025. He said he has been struggling with a constant noise in his mind about who he should be, and it’s in these moments by the water that he tries to find peace.

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There are bad days too, hours that he lies in bed, scrolling TikTok, where the app’s algorithm shows him videos about conspiracy theories, motivational speakers or existential questions about the universe. In July, while on his usual walking route late at night, a man approached Rose, asked him where he’s from and punched him, fracturing his nose, before he could even respond. Rose said he suspects the man was high on meth, but stumbling home that night, he remembers worrying that others might see him and assume he was the one on drugs. “I just felt so defeated in that moment.”

Because the problems facing men and boys are so complex — spanning employment, health, and education — there is no “quick and easy answer,” said Brooks Allen, an education policy advisor to the governor and the executive director of the State Board of Education. He said Newsom’s initiative and other efforts by state agencies are an attempt to show these men that resources do exist and are tailored to their needs.

Will Rose walks to a park near his home in San Pedro, which has become a place of refuge for him, surrounded by greenery and nature, on Oct. 16, 2025.

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One of the organizations highlighted by Newsom is Improve Your Tomorrow, a Sacramento-based national nonprofit that supports young men of color. The organization referred Wilson to a job this past summer and helped him submit a petition to Sac State, asking the university to exclude his father’s income in its financial aid calculations. Wilson got the summer job, though it was only temporary. The university denied the petition.

Earlier this year, when his car broke down, Wilson kept the news secret from his father, who only found out through a grandparent. His father was mad Wilson didn’t tell him but purchased him another car nonetheless.

Wilson said his father would likely want to help with rent this November, but he isn’t sure he would accept. "There's a high chance that I would sleep in my car before he knows I'm homeless," he said. "I feel like I can pick myself up back on my feet."

This project story was produced jointly by CalMatters & CatchLight as part of our mental health initiative.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.