Monday, January 25, 2010
In more than 60 years of data collecting, the unemployment gap between men and women has never been wider. As of the end of the third quarter in 2009, the jobless rate for men was 10.5% and 8.7% for women, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But the disparity is expected to increase even further by the third quarter of 2010, when the male unemployment rate will climb to 11.7% and the female to 9.7%. In some states the gap is considerably wider. Michigan is the worst, with a projected rate of 20% for men and 13.8% for women by the third quarter of this year.
Some observers have dubbed the current economic situation a “mancession” and attribute it to the fact that industries hardest hit by the economic downturn, like construction and manufacturing, are more male-oriented, while fields with a higher percentage of female workers, like health care and education, have been less vulnerable.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Downcast Unemployment Forecast (by Kai Filion, Economic Policy Institute)
Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage (by Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, Pew Research Center) (pdf)
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