Gender and employment

[lumberjack_jeff]

I just read an interesting article about the long term impact on men of employment changes.

http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2008/0508/04ecoact.cfm

The unemployment rate and the jobless rate for men followed each other closely up to the early 1980s. Both rates went up in recessions and down in recoveries. Both were low in the 1950s and 1960s and high in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, since the 1980s, the unemployment rate has followed a downward trend, while the jobless rate for men has continued its upward trend. The jobless rate for men ages 25-54 is currently 13.4 percent, whereas in the late 1940s it was just 5.6 percent.

Red is the "jobless rate" which is defined as the percentage of the working age population without a job - a more relevant statistic than the unemployment rate.


Men are leaving the workforce permanently.


In contrast, here's the above chart, for women.

[Tripod]

1. Nice post Lumberjack_jeff.

[comtec]

2. Im sorry but.... whats the significance of this?

perhaps it's too late for me to understand this atm.
but we're in the middle of a depression.
a recession by any other name....

no one is working as much as they were in the 40's.
yes there are more women in the work place because it's no longer taboo like it was in post WWII for a woman to work to have a career.

Sorry, it's late and the number don't make any real sense to me. hopefully they will in the morning =]

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. The labor market is brutal for men.

The statistics show women displacing men in the workplace.

Organizations such as AAUW publish studies showing that women's pay lags behind men, but the pay lag is manifest only for people who are actually employed. The guys who are unemployed? Although his salary of zero would more than make up the difference... they don't count. For three decades, discouraged working-age men have become unemployed then left the workforce altogether.

For the first time in three years, men are finally beginning to return to work.