Bill Maher, Mike Rowe Lament America’s ‘NILFs’

August 08, 2026 1:22 PM ET Millions of able-bodied American men have stopped working and stopped looking, and two prominent voices spent a Friday night wondering why.Comedian Bill Maher and “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe traded figures and theories on the labor-force exodus during a segment posted to the YouTube channel for “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Maher put the count at roughly 7 million men, mostly young, who fall into a category economists label NILF, short for not in the labor force. He drew the line between that group and the unemployed, noting that jobless workers at least keep hunting for a paycheck while these men have quit the search entirely.Rowe fixed the number at close to 6,990,000 and called the trend unprecedented outside of wartime. He pinned much of the trouble on a colle