Lower male participation in the workforce is a separate though 60+ year trend and has a wide range of causes. More education, more stay at home dads, automation, etc. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001
Suburbanization and the increased availability of housing helped change that. But I'd guess the biggest contributor would have been the increasing age at first marriage. Living with your parents until marriage is one thing if you're married by 21, and quite another if you're single at 30 and can afford to move out - which was increasingly the case in the second half of the 20th century.
Of course, now fewer and fewer can afford to move out, even if they're 30+ and unmarried.
I indiscriminately downvote all comments that make such a statement, and I'm pretty sure others here do the same. It does make me wonder why though. Is it insecurity? Some kind of martyrdom-insurance if people do downvote you? Your comment seems perfectly okay as it is, if not for that.
In times past, most parents would have kicked them out of the house and told them to get a job. Now we regularly have parents that let their kids live at home, even when they have high paying jobs (which used to be frowned upon).
There are two issues here:
First supply and demand in the economy. Many jobs that young men used to do have either been exported to other countries or are being done by cheap undocumented labor.
Second, parents that have enabled this behavior. As much as it isn't pleasant, the fear of not having a roof over your head, or being able to eat is a powerful motivator for people to get off the game console and to find a job, even if it is cleaning toilets with a toothbrush. But when you have parents you can coast and play video games, while living relatively stress free life.
The problem is that a leisure economy is not sustainable long term. If the current generation has less wealth, they won't have the luxury of letting their kids stay at home to play video games. As much as technology will eliminate some jobs, it creates others, and the issue is not really a lowered demand for labor. It's that people looking for a larger profit are trying juice the labor markets in the US by increasing the supply of labor to lower the price by exporting production to places with cheaper labor and bringing in more labor competition......and we are seeing the effects of it.
Explanations like this article are akin to being on a ship with a large hole in the front. It is causing it to lean forward but instead of fixing the hole they are re-arranging the furniture on the deck to try to fix the tilt.