WILLisms.com: Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 818 -- "The Great Recession" Especially Hard On Men.

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Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 818 -- "The Great Recession" Especially Hard On Men.

Womenfolk Not Hit As Hard-

The always spot-on Mark J. Perry has some startling data about how this national recession is impacting men more than women:

...for most of the months in the years between 2004 and 2007 jobless rates were approximately equal for men and women, with male unemployment dropping below female unemployment in some months. In early 2008, the U.S. unemployment rate started increasing due to the onset of an economic contraction, and by May 2008 I noticed a widening gap between male and female jobless rates, and that gender gap increased through 2008 and 2009 and was eventually one of the reasons that this period starting being called a “mancession.”

In December 2007 as the recession officially began, the male jobless rate of 5% was only slightly higher (by 0.20%) than the female rate of 4.8%; but a little more more than a year later, the jobless rate gender gap had widened to 2.5% in May 2009, as male unemployment increased to 10.5%, while female unemployment increased to only 8%. That 2.5% gender difference in jobless rates in May 2009 set a new all-time historical record for the greatest male-female jobless rate gap in postwar BLS history up until that time. Within just a few more months, that record was broken by a 2.7% gender jobless rate gap in August 2009, when male unemployment reached 11% and female unemployment reached 8.3%, and that 2.7% gap stands as the greatest jobless rate gender gap (in either direction) in postwar U.S. history.

During most of the period between 1950 and 1980, male unemployment was less than the female jobless rate. In the post-1980 period, unemployment rates by gender were approximately equal during economic expansions, but significantly higher for men than women during recessions. Therefore, the existence of “male-based recessions” actually started with the 1981-1982 recession, followed by subsequent male-based recessions in 1990-1991 and 2001, but those were all relatively mild in their adverse impacts on men compared to the huge, historically unprecedented disparities in jobless rates in 2008 and 2009.

Fascinating numbers. Women are getting better grades than men in school. Women now outnumber men at Universities. Women are taking professional white collar jobs in far greater numbers than they once did.

Men are in trouble. What are we going to do about it?

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Posted by Will Franklin · 22 June 2010 10:29 AM