| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 1:06:16 PM | We know the economy stinks - it stinks for some more than others. Is the slumping economy a guy thing? Personally, I think it's more of a middle class issue, and it depends on what occupation you're in. My job got outsourced 4 weeks ago, and I'm in the tax profession. I don't believe any job is safe, we're all contractors. Read the article below, it is food for thought (literally).
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By Peter Coy (Business Week)
They eat from the same dishes and sleep in the same beds, but they seem to be operating in two different economies. From last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, according to the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs. You might even say American men are in recession, and American women are not.
What's going on? Simply put, men have the misfortune of being concentrated in the two sectors that are doing the worst — manufacturing and construction. Women are concentrated in sectors that are still growing, such as education and health care.
This situation is hardly good news for women, though. While they're getting more jobs, their pay is stagnant. Also, most share households—and bills—with the men who are losing jobs. And the "female" economy can't stay strong for long if the "male" economy weakens too much.
The troubles for the American male worker, while exacerbated by the current slump, are hardly new. The manufacturing sector is in long-term decline, and construction goes through repeated booms and busts. Meanwhile women are graduating from college at higher rates than men. Some analysts even argue that men are less suited than women to the knowledge economy, which rewards supposedly female traits such as sensitivity, intuition, and a willingness to collaborate. "Men have tended to do better in the hierarchies, following orders and relying on positional power," says Andy Hines, a futurist at the Washington, D.C. consulting firm Social Technologies, who previously worked for Kellogg and Dow Chemical.
Problem industries
Whether you buy that argument or not, it's clear that right now men are in a bad spot. The share of all men aged 20 and over with jobs has fallen since last November, when private-sector employment peaked, going from 72.9% to 72.2% in April. For women the ratio rose, from 58.1% to 58.3%. The adult male unemployment rate has risen twice as much as the female jobless rate since November. Those figures from the BLS' household survey are echoed in its separate survey of employers.
To see why, go sector by sector. Manufacturing is over 70% male and construction is about 88% male. Meanwhile the growing education and health services sector is 77% female. The government sector, which has remained strong, is 57% female. The securities business, which is filled with high-paying jobs, is likely to be the next sector to get whacked — and more than 60% of its workers are men.
Men are having a harder time than women getting back on track after losing a job. "For a man to move from a $20- or $30-an-hour union job to being a Wal-Mart greeter is devastating," says Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University labor historian. Men also shy away from some of the growing fields, such as nursing. Only about 10% of nursing students nationwide are male, notes Harriet R. Feldman, dean of the Pace University School of Nursing. Some retired nurses are actually going back to work because their husbands have lost jobs, says Lois Cooper, vice-president for employee relations and diversity at staffing firm Adecco Group North America in Melville, N.Y.
The weakness of the male economy is squeezing people such as Brian Day, 45, a union carpenter in Ossian, Ind., who made about $35,000 in construction last year but only $1,500 so far in 2008. The family of five is living off his jobless benefits and the $35,000 salary of his wife, a supermarket supervisor. Says Day: "I feel guilty about it." Jeff Bainter, 53, a railroad worker in Muncie, Ind., has enough seniority to keep his job but sees younger men getting the ax. He says there's more security but lower pay in what his wife, Cynthiana, does for a living: medical billing.
The Presidential candidates haven't figured out how to play the disparity between men and women. In BusinessWeek interviews, advisers for all three said they want to help everyone. Austan Goolsbee, chief economic adviser to Senator Barack Obama, said: "Because the unemployed are disproportionately men, they may especially benefit from Obama's program to get us out of recession. But gender has nothing to do with the policy's design." Senator Hillary Clinton's economic policy director, Brian Deese, said: "The goal is not to appeal to men more than women."
One reason for the candidates to tread lightly is that even though men have done worse on jobs lately, they continue to earn more than women on average. Over three-quarters of people who earned over $100,000 last year were men, says Queens College political scientist Andrew Hacker. In fact, although the pay gap between men and women has been gradually narrowing, it actually widened a bit over the past year. Median usual weekly earnings for men grew 4.6% from the first quarter of 2007 through the first quarter of 2008, vs. 3.1% for women.
That might be evidence that the jobs women are landing aren't necessarily good ones. Says Eileen Appelbaum, director of Rutgers University's Center for Women & Work: "We had an expansion of jobs for home health aides, retail clerks, child-care workers. They're low-wage, they're dead-end, and they don't have any benefits.
Another reason politicians aren't making hay of the plight of males is that they are well aware that women are in no mood for it. Working-class and lower-middle-class women in particular, whether or not their men have jobs, are feeling economically stressed, says Bill McInturff, a pollster for Senator John McCain. He adds, "In focus groups they talk about how 'I'm taking care of my parents, his parents, buying groceries, taking kids to the doctor.' These women are tired."
There's no easy remedy for what ails the male economy. Edward J. O'Boyle, senior research associate at the Mayo Research Institute in West Monroe, La., says part of the solution is reviving manufacturing—a gargantuan task. On construction, he favors financial reforms to even out the booms and busts.
Economists are debating whether the overall economy is in a recession. For men, the evidence is clear.
With Maggie Gilmour and Jing Zhou in Chicago and Jane Sasseen in Washington, D.C. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 1:22:40 PM | Read the article below, it is food for thought (literally).
Where's the food?
it's more of a middle class issue
I thought the middle class was dying and has been for a few years. this isn't exactly new news. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 1:39:36 PM | I don't believe it's a guy thing at all. Sure, the industries that have taken the biggest hit are predominatly male dominated. But that started 2 years ago. Now we are seeing the trickle down from that. I think it will get worse before it gets better. I own printing business. The printing I do for new homes is way down and has been for 2 years. Manufacturing started falling shortly after that. Health care (for the Insured and Insured Elderly) has gone up. As well as education. Just a few years ago the service industry was booming. It's starting to go into the slump now. It's only a matter of time before it's noticed across the board.
Many of the areas that have lost high paying jobs($75.000+ a year) are replacing those jobs with lower paying service jobs. So, for every high paying job lost there are 2 or 3 lower paying jobs taking it's place. It won't last because as the big jobs are lost there is less money to be spent in the service industry. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 1:49:03 PM | bassman, the service industry makes lots and lots of money off low-priced items. I spoke with a Wendy's manager once and ask how they could possibly make any money off their 99 cents menu and he said that's been a big revenue-producer for them ....go figure.
As good jobs are lost and lowered incomes prevail, dinner for $4.00 at Wendy's off that menu will look pretty darned good to a lot more families.
Anyway, many of the female-dominated health professions will boon while many of the male-dominated ones, like housing and all the related services, will bust....that's a fact. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 2:40:49 PM |
bassman, the service industry makes lots and lots of money off low-priced items. I spoke with a Wendy's manager once and ask how they could possibly make any money off their 99 cents menu and he said that's been a big revenue-producer for them ....go figure.
This is true. However, Wendy's isn't a high end resturant. The chains won't see much of a change because they are pretty inexpensive already. But the higher end places will and are already noticing a drop in sales and profit. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 6:22:40 PM | | Men are getting disproportionately walloped, so it is a male issue. Because of political correctness, however, it will remain a hidden problem. If the same thing were happening to women or any other demographic, you can bet that this would be all over the headlines. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/8/2008 6:37:47 PM | | If it is a male issue, it's probably because more men are laborers and the labor jobs are the ones being outsourced. Women are more often teachers, nurses, etc. and those professions are so far not being affected too much by this. That's totally simplifiying it I know, but I think it's not too far off the mark. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/9/2008 12:01:13 AM | It's also because men are traditionally and culturally seen as being the providers. In that role, any "loss of power" is going to be gender sensitive. If a woman loses her job, she can still be a homemaker, and society doesn't look down on her quite as much as they do if she was a male.
If a male loses his job, he's just....unemployed.  | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/9/2008 3:53:12 AM | | It seems like society has no feelings towards your plight. As a white male you are solely responsible for the slavery of Black people, the oppression of women, and the sexual abuse of innocent children and all kinds of evil inflicted on the good people of the world. You deserve to be punished for your evil ways. You may want to consider a sex change operation and the purchase of a tanning booth. | |
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| Slumping Economy - is it a guy thing?
Posted: 5/9/2008 6:30:34 PM | ^^^^Bwhahahaha....yeah, we hear you!
When the guy stays at home and the woman goes to work to be the "breadwinner", everyone gets up in arms about it. There was a time I found myself in that position. Her family even had their two-cents to put in, basically bad-mouthing me. Things like "A woman shouldn't do that..." and such drivel. Mostly from the women...but...when confronted, they soon shut up. A simple question and a statement usually ends such BS from peoples mouths.
"I thought you believed in equal rights...was I wrong?" Of course the person replies that they are all for equal rights. The statement of "Well..millions of guys go out every day working, leaving their partner at home to look after the kids and the house..." Well duh!
Anyone not for women being the breadwinner is not for equal rights. Very simple. Because, with equal rights, comes equal responsibility....and the courts are recognizing this more and more.
Of course, the way things are, many families find they almost have to have two incomes in todays economy. As stated earlier by a poster, the higher pay jobs get lost, and it takes two lower paid jobs just to stay in the same income class. It isn't easy.
I was working one full time job and another part time...40 hrs and 30 hours. Sure...the money was weak...but with the two combined I was doing ok. No social life. No family life. Nothing to really look forward to, such as a vacation or anything like that. Burnout imminant. but, I slogged ahead. Till the tax man decided that two different incomes deserved to be taxed at a higher rate because they went to the same person. Boy, did I pay tax. It wasn't worth working that many hours for the pittance I brought home.
Ah well...mabe time to have direct deposit to an account in Denmark...the gov't actually sent me a form to have that done....and the tax laws differ that way, so you keep more of your money. | |
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