OLMIS

by Nick Beleiciks
Published Oct-22-2009

The Giant Leap in Men's Unemployment More Men Collecting Unemployment Insurance Men's Industries Have Been Shedding Jobs Other Views The W-recession?

It started in 2007 when the national housing bubble burst. The demand for lumber needed to build the nation's suburbs and condominiums fell and the layoffs began at Oregon's lumber mills. Then in early 2008 the state's housing bubble began to deflate and previously busy construction workers started having trouble finding work. The recession was underway and two of Oregon's "manliest" industries were hit early and hit hard.

The trend of men losing their jobs faster than women during this recession is occurring across the nation. News articles and commentaries about the topic began to appear with headlines like the one in Forbes that read "In This Recession, Men Drop Out." One headline in USA Today read "Women Gain As Men Lose Jobs." That article predicted that half the national workforce could be women by November.

There have also been some clever names created to describe this trend. "Mancession" is one of the more commonly used titles, although the term "The Great He-pression" may become more common if men's employment situation does not improve.

All this talk about men suffering more job losses than women during the recession is more than speculation. The idea is supported by trends in men's unemployment rates, men's unemployment insurance claims, and job losses in industries with mostly male workers. Only time will tell what the long-term social and economic effects of current trends will be.

Under normal economic conditions, the unemployment rates for men and women tend to be similar. When the recession started in December 2007, the national unemployment rate was 5.0 percent for men and 4.8 percent for women. The two unemployment rates began to diverge within six months of the start of the recession. Since then, the number of unemployed men in the country has grown faster than the number of unemployed women. There are now almost four unemployed men for every three unemployed women, and men account for 56 percent of unemployed workers nationwide. The unemployment rate for men more than doubled through September 2009 to 11.0 percent, while the rate for women increased to 8.4 percent (Graph 1).

Monthly unemployment rates for men and women are not available for states. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does publish state annual average unemployment rates by gender and these do show the beginning of the trend early in the recession. When Oregon's employment situation was strong back in 2007, the unemployment rate for men was 5.1 percent and the rate for women was 5.2 percent. After the recession was underway the unemployment rate in 2008 climbed to 7.4 percent for men and 5.4 percent for women. The rate for men had jumped dramatically, but the rate for women barely registered an increase.

If Oregon's unemployment rates for men and women have been behaving anything like national rates in 2009, then the state's trend of increasing differences between men's and women's unemployment rates has certainly continued.

Men's and women's unemployment rates behaved nearly the same way around the time of the 2001 recession. As shown in Graph 2, men's unemployment rate in Oregon was higher than the rate for women leading into the recession and stayed that way until full job recovery in 2005.

The dramatic increase in men's unemployment rates in 2008 at the beginning of the current recession far exceeded the increase seen in 2001. So while there may be nothing unusual about the unemployment rate for men rising faster and higher in a recession than it does for women, the severity of the early increase in men's unemployment during the current recession could be what ultimately defines this as the "mancession."

Unemployed workers do not need to be collecting unemployment insurance benefits to be counted in the unemployment rate. However, those who do file unemployment claims with the state are asked whether they are male or female. A summary report of the demographics of those collecting unemployment insurance claims benefits is reported monthly. The report includes the number of people by sex, ethnic group, race, age, industry and occupation. Although the report is not a complete count of the unemployed, it does give us some indication of the current share of Oregon's unemployed by gender.

According to the Distribution of Characteristics of the Insured Unemployed report, there were about three men collecting unemployment insurance benefits in Oregon for every two women collecting benefits in September 2009, another sign that the recession has been tougher on men than women. The ratio of men to women collecting benefits is typically about equal, but in September there were over 55,000 men with claims compared to about 36,000 women.

Nearly one-third of the 91,836 unemployed Oregonians collecting unemployment insurance benefits in September were previously employed in manufacturing or construction. Workers from these two industries had the most unemployment insurance claims of any industry. There were 16,403 people who had worked in manufacturing collecting benefits and 12,854 people who had worked in construction.

In a typical year, between 56 to 60 percent of people collecting unemployment insurance in Oregon are men. During the first full year of the current recession the share of men climbed to 62 percent. During the last recession, the share of men increased to 63 percent in 2001. It is too early to know for certain what the average share of insurance benefit recipients by gender will be in 2009.

The share of men and women collecting unemployment insurance benefits also changes with the season. The share of men with unemployment claims rises during the winter as construction and natural resource dependent industries slow down and falls in the summer as those industries start to pick up. This makes it difficult to decipher monthly trends that might hint at where 2009 is headed. However, men's share of unemployment claims was higher in each month of 2009 than in the same month of 2008, indicating that the number of men collecting unemployment insurance was still growing compared to women this year and supporting the idea that this is the man's recession.

Women's share of the workforce has of course increased over time, but men still make up the majority of workers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Local Employment Dynamics employment data series, men were about 54 to 55 percent of Oregon's workforce through the 1990s and 2000s until 2007 when men's share dropped to 53 percent of the workforce. The state's workforce gender split is about the same as it is nationwide.

However, the employment shares by gender are not equal across all industries. As shown in Table 1, last year's employment in construction was over four-fifths men and manufacturing was nearly three-fourths men. About 83 percent of those employed in wood product manufacturing were men (hence the manliest industries reference above). These industries have lost a lot of jobs during the recession.

In fact, 72 percent of the total job losses shown in Table 1 were in industries where at least half the workers were men. It is impossible to say from this information whether the individuals who lost their jobs in each industry were men or women, but it's clear that the heavily male industries have fared the worst.

Education and health services stand out as areas of growth during this recession. Not only has this industry been the single major private-sector industry in the state to add jobs since the start of the recession, it is also the industry with the largest women to men ratio, with three women to every man. The educational and health services industry employs one out of every four women who work for private employers in the state. As long as this industry is adding jobs while the heavily male industries are losing jobs, the women's share of Oregon's workforce will probably continue to increase.

Whether or not women will reach 50 percent of the workforce as a result of changes to the economy caused by the recession, as some have predicted, remains to be seen. Unemployed men will likely move from the industries that are losing jobs into the industries that are gaining jobs. Once the economy recovers, more men will find work in their traditional industries and their share of employment could continue on the short-term trend of about 53 percent of the workforce. Alternatively, the recession could accelerate the long-term trend toward an equal number of men and women in the workforce.

The public discussion of how men are being affected differently than women during this recession goes beyond the observation that men are hurt more this time because their industries are losing more jobs.

Some authors have also observed that women are taking on more hours or returning to the workforce when their spouse loses his job. This view is supported by BLS data that shows the number of women in the labor force nationwide has increased faster than men since the recession began. Although the labor force participation rate has recently fallen for both men and women, it has fallen less for women. So, are the men worse off because they are losing their jobs? Or are women worse off because they need to return to the workforce?

The confusion over whose recession this is anyway was made evident in a recent column in Time. In that column, Christopher Caldwell agrees that data show women are doing better during this recession, but he also observes what he sees as the cliché that "When women lose jobs, the victims are women. When men lose jobs, the victims are, um, women, because they have to make up for that lost male income."

Some economists speculate that the nation is suffering a W-shaped recession. A W-shaped recession typically describes when the economy improves for a short time and then worsens again before finally recovering.

This time around however, the W could take on an entirely new meaning. With men's unemployment still rising, more men relying on unemployment insurance, and job losses continuing in industries consisting of mostly men, this recession may rely on working women to lead the recovery like never before. In this recession, perhaps the W may not stand for the shape of the recession, but for the women who worked the nation out of it.