Heather Boushey notes that for men, the economy is beginning to pick up:
For the full year of 2010, the private sector added jobs every month, and for the past three months it averaged 128,000 per month. In 10 of these 12 months of gain, however, the growth in jobs for men outpaced the growth for women. Last summer, women actually lost jobs while men saw small increases. And in total throughout 2010, men gained slightly more than a million jobs, while women gained a paltry 149,000.
The reason? Economic growth has accelerated in fields -- like manufacturing and construction -- where men hold a disproportionate number of jobs. What's more, men have made large gains in professional services like trade, transportation and utilities. Women, as Kay Steiger noted yesterday, are more likely to hold jobs in state and local government, and as such, are more likely to lose jobs to state budget crises.
That said, when talking about the "mancession" or its recovery, we would do well to disaggregate white men from everyone else. At its worst, unemployment for white men was at 9.6 percent, or slightly above the current national average. By contrast, unemployment for African American men has fluctuated from a dangerously high 15 percent, to a depression-level of 17.4 percent. Currently, unemployment for black men is at 16.5 percent (compared to 8.5 percent for white men). Unemployment for Latino men is lower -- currently 12.8 percent -- but still significantly higher than the number for whites.
Bottom line: Insofar that the "mancession" (a term I could do without) is over, the only beneficiaries have been white men. So far, men of color aren't part of this "recovery."
Update: On Twitter, Josh Barro schools me with a few useful facts: "For white men, the unemployment rate is 0.8 percent points below its peak, for black men, it's 1.8 points below its peak." As he notes, the problem is that unemployment is always much higher for black men, not that they aren't participating in the recovery.
-- Jamelle Bouie
