The unemployment rate doesn't accurately represent this. I'd say labor force participation rate in males is a more accurate reflection of the underlying issue.

Why?

Male labor force participation rate in the US has declined from 87.5% to 70% from 1950 to present, per federal reserve bank of St. Louis. I've sent them a query to get their exclusionary criteria for the base male labor force pool.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a figure of 71% for males over the age of 16 in 2010. There are many confounding factors here:

• We're still recovering from a recession — the rate was ~73% before the recession.
• Since 1950 high school completion has increased from ~ 55% to 80% and college completion has increased from ~ 5% to ~ 25% so there are more students nowadays.
• Since 1950, female participation labor force participation rate has increased by ~ 25 absolute percentage points, lessening the need for the male head of household to work.
• Since 1950, life expectancy for men has increased from 66 to 76, and labor force participation rate of 65-75 year olds is unrepresentatively small, at about 30%.

I'm disappointed in EY's economic analysis, as it ignores all the frictional costs in hiring. Yes, if you ignore such things, by relative advantage arguments everyone who wants a job has one. Since that is observably not the world we live in, those costs are clearly relevant to the analysis. Also, the wage under that perfectly efficient system may be a penny an hour.

• Automation could reduce the cost of hiring.
• I don't see why one would expect the frictional cost of hiring to push against hiring human workers at equilibrium.
• Workers wouldn't be willing to work for 1 cent an hour, so the wage under a perfectly efficient system would have to be higher than 1 cent an hour.
• There could be a Malthusian type scenario where everyone is working really hard just to have a life barely worth living. But this is separate from the unemployment issue.