I’ve seen it go both ways to guys losing their jobs to guys finding their eventual wife at work. A lot of people meet through work, so totally shutting down this opportunity is literally like turning down free money from the government.
Meeting women for sex/relationships has been declining since the 1990s for 2-3 related reasons (see chart below), all having to do with white collar work. White collar work isn't where
@Oatmeal31 is right now. However, I'll mention the factors in white collar work.
1. The 1990s was before Gen Y/Millennials had really made an impact on the mating environment. At the end of the 1990s, the oldest Millennials were in high school. More of the Millennials were in 6th grade or younger in 1999.
Millennials became a very educated group. Millennials that got bachelor's degrees got their bachelor's degrees in the 2000s and early 2010s. Millennials have completed bachelor's degrees at a rate above Generation X and Baby Boomers. In the Boomer generation, having a bachelor's degree meant something. It has meant less for Millennials and now for Gen Z.
Millennials got their bachelor's and advanced level degrees in an era of rising college tuition costs and many Millennials had their degree completion dates timed with the late 2000s/early 2010s massive recessionary period.
It was difficult for Millennials to complete their EXPENSIVE degrees and start to interview for white collar work right as the worst economic recession since the end of World War II was happening.
2. Sexual harassment culture started to emerge out of 1990s. Human Resource departments (comprised mostly of educated, careerist women) started claiming that men were oppressing women with sexual advances in the workplace. This movement gained a lot of steam in the 1990s-2000s. While many corrupt men were exposed, many men with were mild offenses were made to be examples. Many men started losing jobs due to sexual harassment culture in the 1990s-2000s. Sexual harassment culture is still a major part of white collar work to this day, and it has sexually sterilized white collar working environments.
3. Job interviewing for white collar work has gotten much more difficult. White collar workers (especially males) don't want to run the risk of having their jobs be affected and having to look for work. Older Millennials like myself have lived through 3 significant economic downturns in the last 20 years (Great Recession, Pandemic 2020, and now the white collar recession of 2023-present). Job searching has been unpleasant in all of these. Additionally, the way in which white collar jobs are now found has changed. Since the 2000s, white collar jobs have all been applied for online. The majority of white collar professionals now have to submit hundreds to thousands of resumes online for job postings and sit through longer interview processes in order to get a job. Getting a white collar job was easier in the 1980s-1990s.
For white collar workers, the better play is to avoid dating and sexual harassment culture at work. The better play is to make social connections with females at work and hope you get introductions to their female friends who have jobs elsewhere.