What Happens When There Is No One to Call?

The stories behind the social collapse of working-class America

Photo credit: EJ Baker | https://www.inkcap.design/

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It’s not easy to get people to care about numbers. In public opinion research, we translate individual lives into statistics to identify broad social patterns and emerging political trends. There is value in being able to move beyond the often-confusing cacophony of individual voices, but at the same time, something important gets lost in the conversion. Nearly two years ago, I worked with Sam Pressler to publish the report Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in Civic Life. The report documented the yawning educational divisions in social connection. It contains a variety of statistics on social support and civic engagement, but the chart documenting the class divide in friendship generated the most sustained concern and interest. In 1990, roughly half of noncollege Americans reported having at least six close friends—about as many as those with a four-year degree. Only 17 percent of noncollege Americans had as many close friends in 2024, a complete collapse.

My first instinct was to try to understand why this has happened. How much has the collapse of unions, churches, and social trust played into this? How might our growing preference for frictionless interactions and addictive technologies disincentivize active social lives? But these are not the only questions that matter.

For months following the release of our report, Sam talked about wanting to continue this work—not simply to understand the causes, but to more fully appreciate the weight of our findings. As part of this effort, we interviewed some of our respondents to hear their stories and struggles firsthand. It felt like we were just scratching the surface.

Last week, Sam and his colleague, Soren Duggan, published the report “Nobody to Call,” based on 30 in-depth interviews with working class men struggling to find their footing—not just economically, but socially. Their goal was “to make the invisible visible: to humanize and provide texture to the lives of a group of people who are often talked about but are rarely heard from directly.” In the interviews, men unpack and narrate their own experiences, attempt to understand what has happened to them, and reckon with the things they’ve done to themselves. It’s a painful yet necessary read, and even more so to listen to.

Lessons from the “Flourishing Man”

Despite the dire state of their social lives, there is still hope for many of these men. A number of them talked about the relationships that imbued their lives with meaning. Partners and children were important. But of the 30 men that Soren and Sam talked with, there was only one who seemed to truly be thriving. They write:

“Roger joined the virtual interview from the cab of his truck, parked at a construction site where he was working as the chief foreman. From his big smile after my first question about his involvement in community, it was clear his circumstances were quite different from the men I previously spoke to.”

Sam and Soren call Roger the “flourishing man,” and by all appearances, he seems to have a much richer social life than most of his peers.

His connection to his church may be an important reason why. Roger is a born-and-raised Baptist. He grew up in a church with a pastor who was an important formative influence on him. Now, as a husband and father, he is even more involved in his congregation, serving in multiple leadership roles. Roger says:

“I teach Sunday school at church, that’s once a week, and… I am part of the church choir, so… I spend a fair amount of my time writing music and arrangements for my church. We have a brass group that plays and I conduct that. So that takes a fair amount of my time.”

Like many, Roger’s commitment to his church community is deeply personal and has been cultivated over a lifetime. It is clear he feels a sense of obligation to this community and prioritizes it accordingly. He also benefits from it. His personal well-being is indelibly tied to the civic and spiritual commitments that he has made. Roger’s experience is hardly unique either. Remember the trendline showing the social collapse occurring among noncollege Americans? One of the things that most differentiates noncollege Americans with lots of friends from those without is their religious participation. Noncollege Americans with six or more friends are twice as likely as those with none to say they attend services regularly.

But church is not the only place relationships can flourish. Roger’s work is another important source of meaning and purpose. Roger, who is now in his mid-40s, has worked for the same construction company since he was a teenager.

“I’m a foreman of a crew, so if I don’t show up, things don’t go as well. People depend on me at work to help them get the job done. My bosses depend on me. The crew depends on me. I keep them pointed in the right direction.”

Not only does his work provide a sense of purpose, but it affords him the opportunity to work alongside his sons as well. When Soren caught up with Roger, he took the call on-site in rural Nebraska. He was in an especially good mood because he was working with one of his sons that day.

These institutions, whether at church or at work, have helped Roger establish a robust “relational foundation” that has allowed him to navigate the suffering and loss that inevitably finds all of us at some point in our lives. Their absence is catastrophic for many Americans who are forced to do entirely for themselves what once was built through these places—schools, churches, workplaces, social clubs, and civic organizations. Their decline is less the result of individual character flaws than structural failures.

The interviews challenge the simplistic narrative that these men are a group of “nihilistic, resentful, closed-up loners”. Rather, they reveal a group of men systematically separated from places where they could find community. Forty-three-year-old Malik expresses the pain of exclusion that he feels. “My heart has become disheartened. A lot of time with the community, even in church... it’s not real no more. It is becoming like the world with the cliques. It’s more clique-age than community—they call it community—but it is not community when you exclude people that don’t have them jobs like you, the money like you, or even look like you.”

Most of the men interviewed expressed a genuine desire to have more meaningful connections in their lives. It’s not hopeless. Yet the solution is not obvious. Simply showing up at a local church or community center is often not enough. Plenty of men had no idea where they could even go to “find” community. We need a culture that instills a sense of mutual obligation—a recognition that we are responsible for more than our own welfare, reputation, and brand. Community is built through the receipt and provision of help and support. But fewer of us are willing to ask for or offer it. Somehow, we’ve lost sight of how this all works, and some Americans are paying a disproportionately steep price for it.