It’s reigning men.
Males in the workforce, who occupied 70 percent of the jobs cut during the recent economic downturn – prompting economists to dub it the “Mancession” – are now staging a monster comeback.
Since the US economic recovery started in mid-2009, a whopping 97 percent of the new jobs – all but 43,000 of 1.4 million positions created – have gone to the men, according to data released yesterday by the National Women’s Law Center, which analyzed jobs data between June 2009 and December 2011.
The report showed the trend toward hiring men over women is occurring across industries, including some traditionally female professions, said Joan Entmacher, vice president of the DC advocacy group.
In retail, for example, women lost 168,800 jobs between June 2009 and last June, while men gained 172,800 jobs. In the private health and education sector, women continue to dominate the new jobs but at a slower rate than before.
In addition to men gaining most of the new jobs, women are also losing jobs at a faster rate. Since the recovery began, the overall unemployment rate for women has increased from 7.6 percent to 7.9 percent; the rate for men dropped from 9.9 percent to 8.0 percent.
“We looked industry by industry to try to understand what was happening and why women were doing so badly,” Entmacher told The Post. “But looking at it, it was hard to understand what was going on,” she said.
Indeed, the “Mancession” – a playful take on recession – was attributed to massive slashes in male-dominated industries in the wake of the housing meltdown, including construction, finance and manufacturing.
{NY Post/Matzav.com Newscenter}
