"IN the summer of 1983, the United States was just starting to come out of a brutal recession and the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent, twice what it is now in a recovery that has gone on for more than four years.

But men in the prime of their working lives — 35 to 64 — were more likely to have jobs in the summer of 1983 than their successors in that age group are to have jobs now.