It became known as the "mancession" because the recent downturn battered industries dominated by men.
But the economic battle of the sexes has taken a turn. While the nation's nascent recovery has been slow and bumpy for just about everyone, it has been almost nonexistent for women.
Of the 1.3 million jobs gained in the U.S. in the past year, 1.1 million — nearly 90 percent — went to men, Department of Labor statistics show. Women gained just 149,000 jobs during that time. If you count jobs since the recovery officially started in July 2009, men gained more than 600,000 jobs while women lost 300,000, the figures show.
"The recovery is really not happening for women at all," said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women's Law Center in Washington. "It's a slow recovery overall, but it's really leaving women behind."
Some of the disproportionate gains by men were expected because women lost far fewer jobs during the recession, but economists say that doesn't fully explain the trend. Economists point out that public sector jobs more likely to be held by women are disappearing. And some hypothesize that jobless men have been making inroads in sectors traditionally dominated by women.
But for women who have struggled for their place in the American work force — from Rosie the Riveter to Carol Bartz, the Yahoo CEO ranked as the highest-paid woman in the U.S. — this is another painful chapter.
For Annie McLhinney-Cochran, 52, of Havre de Grace, the hunt for a new job has gone nowhere for three years. She recently left San Diego to relocate to Maryland with her husband, who had lost a construction job. She has years of marketing and public relations experience and was convinced her prospects would improve on the East Coast.
"Never has it been this tough," she said. "I think women our age, those 50 on up and getting ready to retire, are the ones getting hit the most."
In San Diego, "we were just kind of making it. Some friends and family have helped. My husband had a few odd jobs. I was one of those people hanging on and hanging on," said McLhinney-Cochran. "It's an awful situation, and I don't see a lot of relief."
While women account for roughly half of the work force, a White House report released this month showed persistent pay gaps between men and women at all levels of education, with women earning about 75 percent as much as their male colleagues. Older female workers face greater pay disparity than their younger counterparts — as 25- to 34-year-olds earn 89 percent as much as men, according to the 2009 statistics.
As the nation begins to crawl out of the deep recession, women are regaining jobs at a much slower pace than they lost them. Women accounted for one of every three lost jobs in the recession, but they're filling just one in every 10 jobs added. And unemployment for women is on the rise.
"It's very frightening because long-term unemployment has worsened," Entmacher said. "It's also alarming because women make up half the labor force and women's wages are so much bigger a piece of the family budget. This is a real crisis for families, especially those headed by women."
Experts have been hard-pressed to explain the slower pace of the rebound for women, said Heidi Hartmann, a labor economist and president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on domestic women's issues such as employment, welfare and family. Based on the group's calculation measuring job loss from the start of the recession to the time when employment hit bottom for each gender group, men have since regained 19 percent of lost jobs while women have regained 6 percent.
"In pure numbers, since men lost more jobs, we'd expect them to get more of the new jobs," Hartmann said. "But they do seem to be getting more than their fair share in the sense they are getting jobs back more quickly than women are and have regained a larger share of the jobs they lost."
Charles W. McMillion, president and chief economist with MBG Information Services in Washington, surmises that several trends are at work. Men have regained more of the manufacturing jobs as that sector has strengthened. And many who have been unable to find work in construction or manufacturing have migrated into fields more traditionally associated with women, such as education and health care, or moved into professional services jobs.
"Clearly men lost more jobs in manufacturing during the recession and have likely regained manufacturing jobs," McMillion said. "Men also surely lost lots of construction trade jobs in the recession and … many of these have gotten new jobs now in the areas of job growth," such as health care and hospitality.
An analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data by the women's policy institute bears some of that theory out. Professional and business services have become the big employer of men in the recovery, with job gains three times as great as women's gains in those sectors. Another sector with large gains for men has been transportation and warehousing. And women are still losing manufacturing jobs.
Hartmann and others said women have clearly been hurt more during the recovery by budget tightening at state and local governments, which have lagged behind the private sector in instituting layoffs. Some 300,000 local government jobs were cut across the country in the past two years, and more than 60 percent of local government employees are women.
The statistics come as no surprise to Kate Furek, a 23-year-old Halethorpe resident who has been unemployed since losing a job at a technology company in June. While out of work, she is attending graduate school at University of Baltimore part time, has volunteered on political campaigns and is relying on her husband's salary to pay the mortgage and student loans.
"The hardest part is that the fields I personally am interested in or the fields where I'm seeking employment are simply not hiring," Furek said. "They may have created X number of jobs, but I haven't seen them."
And when jobs do open up, competition remains fierce.
"You really have to be the exact perfect candidate to even get an interview," said Furek, who wants to work for a nonprofit or government on issues facing minorities or underserved populations. "I've been looking for the right opportunity, but it's gone way past looking for the right opportunity. It's looking for any opportunity. The jobs are just not there."
Linda L. Possehl of Elkridge, an office manager and former administrative assistant at a construction company with more than 15 years' experience, has been out of work since the end of 2009. Yet she considers herself one of the lucky ones. Unlike many unemployed workers she meets, she has been called to interviews.
"I get just so close," she said last week, taking a break from job hunting at the state's Workforce Development Center in Columbia. "This is the longest ever I've been unemployed. I feel like I'm going around in circles right now, but hoping something will open up."
She's managed to pay her mortgage and other bills by paring down expenses, and she's keeping up her spirits by seeking out free activities and events. Knowing that her once-valued typing and dictation skills are outdated, she has sharpened her computer skills and stressed her bookkeeping experience to prospective employers.
"You have to have a goal," she said. "Your goal is to find a position."
For Vicki Hardin, getting a job in a down economy meant changing careers altogether. The former corporate travel agent from White Marsh was laid off in July 2009 and went back to school to train as a medical receptionist. Her unemployment benefits ran out in January, and she began dipping into retirement savings.
Still having no luck finding work, she began volunteering in the emergency room at Franklin Square Hospital Center. She found she thrived on the fast pace and offered to stay after her 3-to-7 shift ended. After two days, she was offered a job. It starts next month.
"I'm very excited," she said last week. "It's only part-time for now … but I can work myself up."
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