Male Employment Never Fully Recovers From Recessions

[jimmy olsen]

Pretty depressing. Why do you guys think this is?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/08/male_employment_never_recovers_from_recessions.html

Male Employment Never Recovers From Recessions

By Matthew Yglesias
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Posted Sunday, July 8, 2012, at 10:25 AM ET

Here's the broadest labor market indicator around—the ratio of employed people to total people—broken down by gender over the past fifty years. One striking thing that pops out is that the labor market for men never recovers from recessions. Each trough is followed by a new peak, but the new peak is lower than the previous peak.

The situation for women is different. For a long time there's a clear upward underlying trend. Whether that trend ended recently or we're simply in an incredibly severe local trough is hard to say.

But for men, in the past full recovery has never happened.

[Zanza]

I would expect employment-population ratio to drop due to society getting older. More and more Americans are 60+ and simply can't or don't need to work anymore. It could be that peak employment-population ratio trends downward longterm.

[Syt]

Reminds me of German "Sockelarbeitslosigkeit", i.e. where at the end of each recession a certain level of unemployment would persist.

[Admiral Yi]

I would expect employment-population ratio to drop due to society getting older. More and more Americans are 60+ and simply can't or don't need to work anymore. It could be that peak employment-population ratio trends downward longterm.

The figures have to be referring to working age population.  Otherwise they don't make sense.  80% of *all* males of any age working?

[Martinus]

This seems like an idiotic conclusion - what these graphs seem to illustrate to me is that the percentage of working women has been increasing steadily between 1960 and 1990s, as this was the period of the greatest social revolution when it comes to female employment rates - and then it has been pretty much following the same trends as the male employment.

Also, it seems to me that the overal employment rate would be similar, it's just that in some jobs women are replacing men. The fact that women go to work does not, in itself, create more jobs so it is to be expected. In fact if you look at 1962 and now, then assuming that the female and the male populace is broadly speaking 1:1 (or whereabouts), there is a slightly larger percentage of the overall populace working today than it did in 1962, so the joblessness rate is lower.

Why would intelligent women replacing useless men be "pretty depressing"?

[Admiral Yi]

The fact that women go to work does not, in itself, create more jobs so it is to be expected.

Unless you make the outlandish assumption that they spend their pay on something.

[Martinus]

The fact that women go to work does not, in itself, create more jobs so it is to be expected.

Unless you make the outlandish assumption that they spend their pay on something.

Not if they replace the men - since then the ousted men would have less money to spend on stuff. Besides, not all women who work are single or DINKs. It could be very well that a lot of working women correspond to an increased number of "stay at home dads". Which would be a reasonable assumption to make.

[Martinus]

Here's a hypothesis why this could be the case - women are apparently more willing to accept worse-paid jobs in exchange for work stability; they could also be more willing to re-train for a different job at a later age.

This means that women may be more attractive employees during recession periods - and consequently when the recession ends, they may already be in the job market whereas a less flexible male worker who was laid out, after being out of work for 2-3 years, becomes unemployable.

This could explain why the spread between employed women and employed men seems to close after each recession.

[CountDeMoney]

The vast majority of men, at the pinnacle of their earning power, are the ones that companies eliminate first when shedding labor costs to stop corporate hemorrhaging during economic downturns. 
When they're inserted back into the recovery, they're at lesser salary points.

That, and the mortality rate of men goes up in times of economic severity.


I just made all that up, but it sounds plausible.

[CountDeMoney]

Reminds me of German "Sockelarbeitslosigkeit", i.e. where at the end of each recession a certain level of unemployment would persist.

Kind of like my argument where, once employers contract due to economic downturns and remain viable, they are loathe to expand labor.  Hence why the private sector that survived 2008 are sitting on 2 trillion of capital, and not hiring for shit.

[Zanza]

I would expect employment-population ratio to drop due to society getting older. More and more Americans are 60+ and simply can't or don't need to work anymore. It could be that peak employment-population ratio trends downward longterm.

The figures have to be referring to working age population.  Otherwise they don't make sense.  80% of *all* males of any age working?

Wouldn't that mean about 37% unemployment and underemployment for males and 45% for females right now? That can't be correct as it is higher than even during the depression, no?

[Zanza]

Reminds me of German "Sockelarbeitslosigkeit", i.e. where at the end of each recession a certain level of unemployment would persist.

If that graph would go to 2012, it would no longer hold true though. Right now, unemployment in West Germany is about 5.7%, which is lower than in the 30 years before. Unemployment in East Germany is at its 1991 level.

[Valmy]

Looks like we are recovering  from the latest one better than the ladies...not that that says much.

[MadImmortalMan]

Here's a hypothesis why this could be the case - women are apparently more willing to accept worse-paid jobs in exchange for work stability; they could also be more willing to re-train for a different job at a later age.

I saw a study about that. It showed men being better at negotiating better salaries because they were more willing to take the risk than the women were. I guess the female strategy is better in recessionary times.

[CountDeMoney]

I saw a study about that. It showed men being better at negotiating better salaries because they were more willing to take the risk than the women were.

We have to be;  we don't have cleavage to offer during the interview.