Sometimes leaving the workforce turns into a labor of love

From the 1970s to 2015 the number of prime-aged men engaged in the labor force dropped from about 95% participation to 88%. Some leave voluntarily. Others, not so much.

In the latest installment of our series “Clocked Out,” which follows people who've left the workforce, we spoke with Ryan McCaffrey in Burlington, Vermont, who lost his job a year after learning of his son’s disability diagnosis.

“I was kind of searching for a job. You know, I realized that it was going to make more sense for there to be kind of one parent at home who was going to be helping out more with this, just so we didn't have to do a lot of juggling,” McCaffrey said.

Now, McCaffrey is a stay-at-home dad, caring for his son while his wife works. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his sights set on eventually reentering the workforce.

“I'm nervous for that. As I was just exiting the workforce, I was using AI pretty heavily,” McCaffrey said. “I feel like I may be missing a little bit.”

To hear more of McCaffrey’s story, click the play button above.