Update On The Mancession: Men Lose More Jobs Then Women Do Since January 2008

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study titled "In Two Years of Economic Recovery, Women Lost Jobs, Men Found Them." What is interesting about this report is that the title of this study contradicts what the Pew Research Center found: 

"Although the latest trends in employment are working in favor of men, the full period of the recession and the recovery has set men back more than women. From December 2007 to May 2011, the employment of men has decreased from 70.7 million to 66.1 million, or by 4.6 million. For women, employment has fallen from 67.3 million to 64.9 million, or by 2.4 million. Thus, while men have taken an early lead in the recovery, they still have far more ground to cover than women to return to pre-recession employment levels."

Professor Mark J. Perry, who teaches economics and finance at the School of Management at the Flint campus at the University of Michigan, provided a graph on his blog that gives a visual demonstration of the key paragraph above:

Here's Mark Perry's explanation of the graph: 

The chart above helps to graphically illustrate the paragraph above by showing monthly employment levels for men and women from January 2002 to June 2011.  Although it's true that men have made greater employment gains since the recession ended, it's also true that men are still much worse off than women when we consider the entire period from January 2008 to June 2011.  The current number of payroll jobs in the U.S. (131 million) is about 7 million jobs below the peak of 138 million jobs in January of 2008 when the recession was first starting.  Of the 7 million jobs lost since 2008, men have lost 4.6 million or 65% of the total, compared to 2.4 million fewer jobs for women, or 35% of the total.  

Bottom Line: Despite the recent job gains for men since early 2010, the Great Recession has still had a disproportionately and significantly negative effect on men compared to women, and it's not even close: For every 100 jobs lost by women since January 2008, men have lost 192 jobs, so it's still very much of a "mancession," despite the recent "hecovery."

The debate on the mancession has been raging for a while now. Some people think the mancession is now slowing down. Others think the trend is reversing in which they're calling it a "He-covery." 

The New York Times was the first to notice the mancession in February of 2009 and became a hot topic during the summer of that year. The Atlantic, in July of 2009, cited a statistic that "eighty percent of job losses in the last two years were among men." In August of 2009, Professor Mark J. Perry,  pointed out in an earlier blog article that the trend could be traced back to December of 2006. However, some people even questioned whether or not the mancession was real. Despite the minority who question this phenomenon, it is real and it still is an ongoing economic issue. 

This study from the Pew Research Center makes it clear that while unemployment has improved for men, its too premature to declare that men have made a full "hecovery".

It’s Not The Economy, Stupid. It’s Your Manly Bits

Ms. Magazine, has published an article “It Wasn’t Your Resume, It Was Your Vagina" in which it attempts to blame the fact that women cannot find jobs due to gender discrimination. The article conveniently ignores the fact that, for the first time in the American history, more men are out of work than women. They even gave this historical phenomenon a name: mancession.

The New York Times noticed this trend in February of 2009 and became a hot topic during the summer of that year. The Atlantic, in July of 2009, cited a statistic that "eighty percent of job losses in the last two years were among men." In August of 2009, Professor Mark J. Perry, who teaches economics and finance at the School of Management at the Flint campus at the University of Michigan pointed out in his blog that the trend could be traced back to December of 2006. However, some people even questioned whether or not the mancession was real. Despite the minority who question this phenomenon, it is real and it still is an ongoing economic issue. Some people think the mancession is now slowing down and others think the trend is reversing in which they're calling it a "He-covery."

Another interesting claim made in the Ms. Magazine article is that women are not performing as well as men in job interviews because they lack job certain job skills  that are usually associated as being a masculine trait:

"men tend to fare better than women on job interviews, particularly in male-dominated fields, where hiring managers tend to value stereotypically “masculine” qualities such as intellectual rigor and mathematical ability."

This claim fails for a number of reasons. HotAir, in covering the same Ms. Magazine article, has pointed out one reason why this argument doesn't fly:

"there are certain fields in which those characteristics – like mathematical ability -  are required, regardless of gender. It’s called, you know, job qualifications."

Another reason why this claim fails is that the same reason can be said about why men can't find jobs in this economy. They don't possess job skills generally associated with the feminine trait. Julia Margo, writing for the online version of Guardian newspaper, explains:

"The emerging knowledge economy demands a new, softer skill set – empathy, sociability, confidence, resourcefulness. Women are perceived as being better at soft skills, and now they count for more. In the course of just over a decade, Demos research found, these skills became central to life chances: for those who turned 30 in 2000, such character capabilities had become 33 times more important in determining earnings." 

So, which is it? Guys can't get jobs because they don't possess the softer skill set or girls can't get jobs because they don't have the masculine skill sets needed? Could it depend on the type of field that a male or female applicant is applying to? Could it be that today's workplace is looking for both soft and hard skill sets?

To be honest, the argument that women aren't getting hired because they have a vagina isn't very convincing. As I explained above, there is a plausible case to made that men aren't getting hired because they have a penis. But I don't find that argument convincing either. 

Quite frankly, it seems to me that the fact that men and women are having difficulty finding employment has less to do with gender discrimination than it does with education, experience and the type of industry that a person is trying seek to enter into. It also has to do with the current state of the economy and the fact that many industries are going through changes to keep up with the pace of the evolution in technology.  I also suspect that our poor economy and the uncertainty about the government's expansion into the economy could also be a factor in why its hard for men and women to get hired for a job.

Let me make myself clear. I'm not saying men have it harder in finding a job than women do or that men have it harder than women do. A plausible case could me made that having a vagina or a penis can be a barrier to finding a job. I'm not denying that gender discrimination doesn't occur in hiring or in employment either. All I'm saying is that people can't find a job because of their gender isn't the best explanation for why men and women can't find a job.