New government statistics show that men are outpacing women in the nation’s economic recovery. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of 1.3 million jobs created in the last year, just 10 percent (149,000) went to women.
Despite men’s success in the recovery effort, they still lag far behind women in the raw unemployment numbers and percentages. In February, male unemployment was 9.3 percent, female unemployment was 8.5 percent, leaving a .8 percent jobless rate gap in favor of women.
Even as advocates voice concern about the fact that the recovery appears to be favoring men, the recession appears to have favored women with the downturn hitting men far harder — to an extent that some economists refer to the down-turn as a “mancession.”
According to calculations from University of Michigan economist Mark Perry, from the start of the recession in late 2007 to January 2011, men have lost nearly twice as many net jobs as women. Of the 7.7 million job losses, 5.1 million were jobs once held by men (66.1 percent) while 2.61 million (33.9) were jobs once held by women. For every 100 jobs lost by women since December 2007, men have lost 195 jobs.
Graphic courtesy: Mark Perry
The job-losses resulting from the recession were in largely industrial, male dominated fields, while “pink collar” jobs did not feel as much of the pinch. Despite the fact that men have a long way to go before they catch up to women, some are concerned that men are recovering too quickly.
“The recovery is really not happening for women at all,” said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington told The Baltimore Sun. “It’s a slow recovery overall, but it’s really leaving women behind.”
Nevertheless, Perry says there is no question that men bore the brunt of the recession’s wrath.
“Considering that recession-related job losses have fallen so disproportionately harder on men than women by a factor of almost 2:1, and the fact that the male jobless rate has been higher than the female rate in every month since 2006, there is no question that it is men who have suffered the most during the last three years. By any standard measure of labor market conditions, it is women who have fared much better during the ‘mancession,’” Perry contends.
