KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As the economy slowly recovers, a new trend shows that men are getting most new jobs – including some jobs traditionally considered “women’s work.”
According to a report in USA Today, the upcoming expiration of unemployment benefits may be a big reason why men are taking positions in the retail and service-related industries typically taken by women as they try to avoid dropping out of the workforce.
Statistics show that men are currently working in two-thirds of private sector jobs, and in a 12-month period ending in November, 1.28 million men were hired, compared to just 600,000 women. According to USA Today, hundreds of thousands of those men are working in retail and service-related jobs, as construction and other typically male-dominated industries continue to be slow.
In October of 2009, women held 49.99 percent of all jobs – very nearly creating a female majority workforce for the first time ever in the U.S. Now that number is down to 49.4 percent.
Analysts say that there is no one clear reason why men are making up more of the workforce, but say that it’s clear that men took a major hit early on in the recession.
