A great number of handicrafts, agriculture, forestry and slate mining were long the villagers’ main livelihoods, although with growing industrialization, many men were seeking work in the Saarland and the Ruhr area to finance their homes. The Second World War brought Mengerschied not only casualties but great damage from artillery fire. Since 1946, Mengerschied has been part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. After the war, a whole new way of life came to the village's economy. The 400-hectare forest, the Hochwald – heavily damaged by the storm Wiebke in 1990 – and the hunting associated with it have long yielded income to finance municipal work. The "Feldmark" (a common noun, not a proper name), the area of farmland comprising some 450 ha and traditionally marked with boundary stones, was once worked by some 70 small farmers (1950), a number that has now shrunk to 4 full-time farmers.