Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, was one of the primary proponents of this structural argument in the WSJ essay, which cited his 2016 book "Men Without Book". As he explains, overall labor force pariticpation rate has been declining since 2000, when it peaked at about 67%.

Eberstadt believes that if the US had maintained the ratio of employment-to-population from 2000, we would have 13M more people working today, more than enough to fill the record number of open jobs.

So, if they're not working, where are all these working-age men and what are they doing? Are they volunteering or channeling their energies into worship or civil society? Not at all. From all we can tell, it looks like they're mostly sitting at home. "By and large, nonworking men don’t 'do' civil society," Eberstadt says. "Their time spent helping in the home, their time spent in worship—a whole range of activities, they just aren’t doing." For a source on this, Eberstadt pointed to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey, which compiles respondents’ self-reported habits.

Turns out, working age men were increasingly "staying at home a lot" even before the pandemic.

In fact, it is desired behavior, such way good amount of people are minimizing their energy (especially fuel) usage. So, it is not random, it is allrelated to that elites want from masses.