'Man-cession' Ends as Males Learn New Job Skills

[Geee]

Human Events:

Some of us called it the man-cession. In the deep recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, many more men than women lost their jobs.

The imbalance was huge. The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a decline of 5.4 million jobs for men versus 2.1 million for women. So 71 percent of job losses were absorbed by men.

If the numbers had been the other way around, you surely would have seen a lot of newspaper and magazine stories about women as the victims of the recession -- the kind of stories with headlines reading "Women, minorities hardest hit."

There were fewer such stories about the impact of the recession on men. One reason is that job losses, as is usually the case in recessions, were heaviest in construction and manufacturing, sectors in which men tend to predominate.

The other reason is that the journalistic class is just not inclined to see men as victims. So we haven't seen much investigation into whether the man-cession led to more divorces, family breakups, substance abuse or suicides.

There's another factor at work here: the difference between public-sector and private-sector jobs. During the recession, almost all the job losses were in the private sector.

Public-sector employment held up pretty well in the recession and into 2010. One reason was the Obama Democrats' February 2009 stimulus package, one-third of which was aid to state and local governments -- in which most jobs are held by women.

This was an attempt to maintain employment among public-sector union members. Such unions account for most union members, and unions channeled $400 million to Democratic campaigns in the 2008 campaign cycle.

But now the stimulus funds have run out, and public-sector payrolls are falling.