Featured Guest Blogger February 8th, 2010
Robin J. Sitten is a contract project manager, for the past 10 years in the field of online recruiting and applicant tracking systems. She is a frequent contributor and SkirtSetter for Skirt.com, where this blog originally ran, and Co-Founder and Content Editor of the Business Women’s Finishing School & Social Club. Robin resides in Clinton, MA.
An interesting statistic has emerged from the umeployment crisis: men are being hit harder than women. According to The Economist’s coverage on the rising rate of women in the workforce (Female Power), “In America three out of four people thrown out of work since the recession began are men; the female unemployment rate is 8.6%, against 11.2% for men.”
Considering that women are paid less than men in the main, (female median wage is 80% that of male), it may appear to be an issue of economics. Is it simply more cost-effective to keep the lower wage earners?
Some years ago I was considering an internal transfer, and sought the advice of a senior manager, who wanted to be sure I was making the best long-range plan. I said that I was concerned about the way this new department shuffled its workers around to suit project needs, and that one could never be sure of one’s duties or manager. “The next thing you know I am the Saturday night manager,” I said.
She said, “No, the next thing you know you are laid off because you are too expensive.”
Let’s consider the manager’s point of view for a moment. Faced with a mandate to cut $X for budgetary considerations, it may feel humane to cut the top earners, and save as many jobs as possible. In most industries, regardless of collar, those seats are likely to be held by men.
However, if we follow this logic, we should expect that unemployment was hitting White men harder than men of color, who earn about 75% the median wage of Whites. The statistics do not bear this out.
Rather, Black men have an unemployment rate nearly twice that of White men (18% and 10% respectively). In men over 25, the rates are 15% for Blacks and 9% for Whites, when we can assume that men over 25 earn more than those younger. Hispanic or Latino workers have a 12% unemployment rate, though they have the lowest median weekly wage of the 4 demographic groups counted. Asians, who earn the highest, have the lowest unemployment figures (8.4% men and 7.6% women). It is not simply a matter of keeping the cheapest labor to save the bottom line.
The Economist has another theory about what the numbers are telling us:
“The rich world has seen a growing demand for women’s labour. When brute strength mattered more than brains, men had an inherent advantage. Now that brainpower has triumphed the two sexes are more evenly matched. The feminisation of the workforce has been driven by the relentless rise of the service sector (where women can compete as well as men) and the equally relentless decline of manufacturing (where they could not).”
Taking a look at figures by industry puts some detail to that theory’s framework.
Management and Professions in the U.S., historically a low unemployment figure, is at 4.6%. General office occupations (including sales) is at 8.5% The Service industry is at 9.6%, after hitting an all-time high of 10.2% last summer.
Now comes the real news for the changing face of American Labor.
Production/Transportaion jobs - 13.3%
Natural Resources, Constuction and Maintenance - 15.6%
It may indeed be economics, but in this case, it is the industries that have historically represented the fewest amount of women that have been hit the hardest, and we have coincidentally been preserved as a result.
