Up until about 10 years ago, if I bought a pair of jeans, they were usually sized by both waist and inseam (length). Increasingly, I’m seeing jeans with waist sizes but no inseam sizes - ir’s just 30", 32", 34", and so in. I have short legs for a 5’ 10" tall man, and most jeans with no inseam sizing are too long for me; it’s as if 34" inseams are a standard now. Why are inseam sizes less common for jeans now than in the past?
It’s the work of the tailor unions. They’re building to be the next teamsters.
Seriously, I think it’s due to the sagging pants fashion. Alternately, it could be the fashion that dictates all cuffs be worn off, leaving little strips of denim behind.
This is strictly a WAG, but could it be that stores are stocking more different styles of jeans nowadays (regular fit, relaxed fit, carpenter jeans, stone-washed, button-fly, straight leg, wide ass, blah, blah, blah), leaving them less room to stock as many different sizes in each style?
I had a guy at a “fashion-forward” type store tell me that jeans are sold long now and you have “your tailor” cut them. I can’t imagine that this is expected to trickle down to where I normally buy jeans- I think I still see lengths. But I wear a 32 inseam, a pretty common size.
What kind of jeans are you buying? All I’ve ever bought are Levis and they always come X" x Y".
I read in GQ a few months ago the reason that designer jeans all come in extremely long inseams. They claimed designer jeans are made in relatively small volumes compared to more mainstream jeans, and that the mills have minimum volume orders for different inseam lengths. Since the designers don’t have the volume to support different sized inseams, they order in one very long inseam. This makes complete sense to me from a production standpoint.
Is it the brand you’re buying? daHubby wears Levi’s and Wrangler jeans and they still have the waist x inseam measurements on the tag.
Yes, that does make sense, and I’ll toss in another possibility:
The fashion of wearing one’s pants rolled/cuffed - is it to compensate for excessive length, or are jeans being made long with the expectation that they’ll be worn that way?
Jeans are the only pants I can buy with different inseams.
I would KILL for unhemmed pants - I have long legs and the standard length of women’s pants (which usually only come with one measurement: waist) is too short for me.
Perhaps your jeans manufacturers have taken lessons from the evil manufacturers of women’s pants, who are smug in their knowledge that women’s sizes only vary along a single dimension.
Men’s fashion jeans are currently being worn by the younger set low on the hips (read, hanging off the butt, showing the underlying boxers). The result is a style that makes inseams virtually irrelevant; the bottom 4" of the jean simply drags along on the ground, trod on by the heels of the wearer.
I daresay that if you buy your jeans from labels that market to older crowds, you’ll still find inseam variations. 
Try Land’s End. You can order their pants unhemmed or, if you know your inseam, hemmed specifically for you at no charge. They have some current styles too, they’re not all mom-pants, though they have those too if that floats your boat.
Right. We all do. Just like anyone who’s over 30 wears their pants squarely at their nipples.
That’s not always the case though. Go check out the websites for Lucky or Guess or what have you, and you’ll see that a lot of jeans are being worn lower, but they’re also lower rise, so they’re not necessarily sagging. I think the underlying logic to the OPs question is that if you’re going to spend $100 or more on a pair of jeans, you don’t mind having to take them to your dry cleaner and have a half-inch hemmed off. And they can do a professional job, usually, so it looks like you bought them that way.
I think Fear the Turtle and Thudlow are sort of onto something. It seems that it’s more the low and mid-priced jeans like Levis and Wrangler that offer the whole range of lengths. I say “sort of”, however, because I’ve owned a few pairs of Levis from their “premium” line, meant to compete with Lucky and Guess, and they also had different lengths.
Seconded. They have a good little selection of trousers and will hem for you, in regular and tall inseam ranges, with or without cuffs.
Here in Colombia, it is impossible to buy a pair of jeans by waist and inseam size. They only have waist size and you have to take them to a tailor if you want them sized for your legs. Many people here just wear them too long, or fold them up with a large cuff. I guess one size fits all.
Cuffed jeans? I thought I was going to faint at my band director’s pleated jeans!
I meant the non-jean trousers.