Unemployment: It’s A Guy Thing
Kansas City Star -- In the last 12 months, more than 8 of every 10 pink slips have gone to men. The firings have been so gender-lopsided that the male unemployment rate is more than a percentage point higher than that of women.
NY Times -- …82% of the job losses (1.932 million) were jobs held by males, and only 18% of jobs losses (430,000) were jobs held by females…Further, the November unemployment rate for men is 7.2% vs. only 6% for women, and the gap in jobless rates between men and women has been increasing for the last six months...
21 Comments:
You can fire men without fear of lawsuit or bad publicity.
Two thoughts:
1) men, on average make more than women. ($0.77:$1 were the figures from 2006(?)) There's more to be gained by letting a male worker go than a female worker.
2) Education. Boys don't go to school in the numbers that girls do. The college average is now almost 60-40 women:men. Our boys are being left behind in school starting in elementary school. Unfortunate, because education doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.
I expect the ratio to change as this recession settles, but there will still be more men out of work than women.
12,000 more women entered the workforce in the same timeframe that 1 million men lost theirs. Not terribly baffling, unfortunately.
Riaqn - Aren't (financial) returns to education much lower for men than for women?
When I was employed in temp jobs recently, I noticed that all the easy jobs went to women.
Receptionist, cash register, office assistant, drive thru person? Goes to women.
Guys get to dig ditches, crawl over roofs, carry heavy loads, breath smoke and heavy dust and chemicals for the same pay.
If a job is on an assembly line where you're told to 'pick up the pace' even though your body is aching, it's done by a man. If a job is sitting behind a desk in a clean safe office and checking an appointment book or answering a phone call once every twenty minutes or more, it's done by a woman.
Just stand behind a woman in a grocery store line and watch how she doesn't look through her purse for her money, cards, or ID ahead of time out of consideration for all the people behind her. Then she doesn't move out of the way until everything is back in her purse and filed just right (and if they file everything, why does it take them so long to find it?). Obviously, the subconscious assumption of women is that the world has to wait on them, and that includes other women as well.
The evolutionary paradigm is that males are expendable, and that's how modern society thinks too.
Age is probably a factor as well in the higher rates of male firings. I would guess that the younger cohorts of workers have higher rates of women than in the baby boomer age-group. Since older workers earn more, they're more likely to be layed off in return for cheaper less experienced younger workers.
Dec 9
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09hirshman.html?_r=1
"Mr. Obama compared his infrastructure plan to the Eisenhower-era construction of the Interstate System of highways. It brings back the Eisenhower era in a less appealing way as well: there are almost no women on this road to recovery.
Back before the feminist revolution brought women into the workplace in unprecedented numbers, this would have been more understandable. But today, women constitute about 46 percent of the labor force. And as the current downturn has worsened, their traditionally lower unemployment rate has actually risen just as fast as men’s."
Uh. No.
Anonymous: /Just stand behind a woman in a grocery store line and watch how she doesn't look through her purse for her money, cards, or ID ahead of time out of consideration for all the people behind her. Then she doesn't move out of the way until everything is back in her purse and filed just right (and if they file everything, why does it take them so long to find it?). Obviously, the subconscious assumption of women is that the world has to wait on them, and that includes other women as well./
MY subconscious assumption is that you're looking for reasons to blame women for your problems, and if you can't find something, you'll make it up. Please go away.
Couldn't this be selection by gender sorting into different occupations? If most layoffs are coming from construction, for instance. You see where I'm going.
Anonymous At 12/08/2008 2:30 PM on their comment about women in checkout lines is pretty sexist.
Anonymous might want to oogle "confirmation bias," which is what is going on here. I guarantee if you did a scientifically valid double blind survey of check out lane behavior you will find just as many oblivious jerks on both sides of the gender street.
Obliviousness is not a gender-trait.
I guarantee if you did a scientifically valid double blind survey of check out lane behavior you will find just as many oblivious jerks on both sides of the gender street.
Really? You guarantee it? On what basis?
It's guaranteed on the same basis the sexist, knee-jerk comment was made: none. That which is asserted with no evidence can be dismissed with the same.
And before you come back to cite your 'personal' evidence -- no, the plural of anecdote is not data.
Anonymous 1:31
Good point.
I'd take your "guarantee", Richard, and bet you any amount of money you are wrong about finding zero difference.
Although you are using scientific language, you admit that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Maybe to start getting an idea, you could peruse this paper, particularly the section titled "Feeling Important vs. Checking Out Fast".
http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1103
Or http://www.jstor.org/pss/2489149. "...for many housework and nonhousework activities, the patterns of judgment are not always the same for men and women."
And doesn't humor usually have a kernel of truth:
http://wilk4.com/humor/humorm370.htm
Anonymous..dont you know that you can only generalize about men? Doing so about women is insta-sexism. I see you were out on the first day of PC Re-Education 101 at college.
"men, on average make more than women."
No, they don't. If you factor out real life -- e.g. the fact that women take off more time than men (to have children, for example) and compare apples to apples -- people who have been working the same number of unbroken years in identical positions -- the wage disparity is skewed towards women.
Likewise, there are more men in management positions, so of course they'll be fired, proportionately, in larger numbers.
But I suspect that Randian is correct: men can be fired with impunity because they're less likely to file suit for "gender discrimination".
I suspect in this case it has more to do with men doing the heavy construction jobs -- and those have been hit hard.
As for women getting easier jobs...yes, but those jobs tend not to pay much.
Half of the sexual revolution is almost complete with women being nearly liberated. We are yet to even recognize the other half. We've exhausted to death the old social arrangements that have been unfair to women. We are yet to recognize the arrangements that are unfair to men: homelessness, insurance and health premiums, suicide and incarceration rates, abortion rights, father's rights, war, crime statistics, life span, workplace safety, and divorce settlements. One day, when the world is a little more enlightened and women are out of the cave along with men, all might be free.
John - Hirshman cherry picked data. She is being challenged at danieldrezner.com/blog/ and meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/womens_work_2.php
1,069,000 fewer men are working than a year ago. 12,000 more women are working according to the Boston Globe article below.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/12/05/losing_jobs_in_unequal_numbers/?page=full.
Will
"Just stand behind a woman in a grocery store line and watch how she doesn't look through her purse for her money, cards, or ID ahead of time out of consideration for all the people behind her. Then she doesn't move out of the way until everything is back in her purse and filed just right (and if they file everything, why does it take them so long to find it?). Obviously, the subconscious assumption of women is that the world has to wait on them, and that includes other women as well."
--Sadly, I was thinking this just the other day while in line at a store.
Also, the post on women actually making more than men IF YOU ACTUALLY FACTOR IN ANY REALITY is also true. But, as American's we will never know the truth, as it doesn't fit any PC BS.
And DEN MOTHER - we are stating our thoughts here. I know that working in the US you are not used to hearing non-PC crap, but get used to it. After the US collapses. The rest of the West will collapse. And your gender will loose all of it's special rights and SPECIAL government protections.... Oh which ones?
How about:
WIC
VAWA
Women only business grants
Womens studies in schools
Office for womens health
And a few government sites for you:
www.4woman.gov/
www.womenbiz.gov/
www.dol.gov/wb/
www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/onlinewbc/index.html
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/vawo/
www.fns.usda.gov/wic/
www.state.gov/g/wi/
www.opm.gov/employ/women/index.htm
www.womenshealth.gov
www.fda.gov/WOMENS/
www.cdc.gov/Women/
etc.
What a JOKE THE US IS! So please give me a break about all of the BS that your gender spews.
The group really punished by the whole gender swap is the kids. Women, God bless 'em, were the cornerstone of the family. The teachers of kindness, humility, generosity. Always there when you needed them. The living, accessible teacher of everything that makes us good. Now all the teachers of good have gone off to be totally money focused like the rest of us. Look around the office, do the women smile like your mom did, or do they have that, "you're impeding my progress" look we've had a monopoly on for so long. Are women really happier now? They've swapped the greatest achievement possible(raising a good kid) for monetary independence. I can't imagine how useless I'd feel at 60 if I'd not participated in raising a child. What will you look back on? That big promotion back in 2008? How you proved you were smarter than the men? Look at you now, you are the men. Happy now? Let's talk when you're 60. Shame on all of us for not giving women the respect they deserved when they had the most important position of all: Raising kids to be good men and women.
Are these historical data on the unemployment rate comparison's between men and women delineating the civilian workforce unemployment rate? If the assumption that men in the military are employed within these statistical analyses, the true unemployment rate is and has been significantly higher for men in the civilian work force for some period of time. Further, if the relative and absolute number of men in penal institutions were considered "unemployed", this too would add significantly to the unemployment rate of men.
Since women have had, for some period of time, significantly greater disposable income than men, the aforementioned tends to substantiate the aforementioned presumed assumptiona such that the true unemployment rate for men in the civilian work force is and has been significantly higher for men for many years.
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