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".