{"id":1411,"date":"2012-05-26T11:35:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-26T11:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kerryhannon.com\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2012-06-07T12:00:27","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T12:00:27","slug":"how-are-women-really-doing-on-the-job-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kerryhannon.com\/?p=1411","title":{"rendered":"NextAvenue.Org: How Are Women Really Doing on The Job Front"},"content":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s nothing quite like a presidential campaign to get women some attention. Female voters are, after all, the majority of the electorate<\/div>\n
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Comstock | Thinkstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Little wonder then that Democratic strategists see women as the key to victory, and that their Republican counterparts are responding accordingly: Last week the Romney camp announced that women accounted for 92 percent of the job losses since President Barack Obama took office.<\/div>\n
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Ouch. That statistic got my attention.<\/div>\n
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Job Losses for Women<\/strong><\/div>\n
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On the face of it, that job-loss figure is correct. Women lost 683,000 of the 740,000 nonfarm jobs that have vanished since Obama\u2019s inauguration, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Tampa Bay Times\u2019 fact checking website,\u00a0PolitiFact<\/a>, the Washington Post\u00a0Fact Checker<\/a>\u00a0and MSNBC\u2019s\u00a0First Read<\/a>\u00a0met Romney\u2019s statistics with skepticism. But there was no denying the validity of the claim.<\/div>\n
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That said, there\u2019s another way to look at the job-loss numbers.<\/div>\n
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Let\u2019s pull back a second. From the time the recession began in December 2007 \u2014 a year before George W. Bush left office \u2014 until Obama\u2019s administration began, men lost nearly three times as many jobs as women (3.4 million vs. 1.2 million).<\/div>\n
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Then the other shoe dropped, and (to mix metaphors) the pink slips were smacked into palms of female workers.<\/div>\n
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As politicians know, by picking a time frame that suits your purposes, you can massage numbers to say pretty much whatever you want.<\/div>\n
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Men, Women and Recessions<\/strong><\/div>\n
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It\u2019s fairly common in recessions for men to lose jobs first and women second, which is exactly what happened this time.<\/div>\n
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In the first two years of the recession, men were clobbered, losing jobs mostly in fields like construction and manufacturing. But layoffs lagged behind in the public sector, in such areas as teaching and government where women tend to work.<\/div>\n
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Then women lost those kinds of jobs in droves as state and local governments cut their budgets sharply to combat falling tax receipts.<\/div>\n
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Which Jobs Will Return?<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Will women see those jobs come back? Quite possibly.<\/div>\n
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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics researchers say they expect many of the positions to return. While employment in the federal government is expected to fall between now and 2020, they say, state and local government employment is projected to rise. Education, one of the fields with the largest projected job gains, will account for almost two-thirds of the increase.<\/div>\n
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\u201cRising enrollment in primary and secondary schools and the increasing assimilation of those with disabilities into regular instruction will drive employment gains for both teachers and aides,\u201d the Labor Department\u2019s jobs report says.<\/div>\n
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But other fields dominated by women face a bleaker future. For instance, bank teller positions that were eliminated in the past few years are unlikely to return, since Americans are increasingly banking online and prefer ATMs to transactions at teller windows.<\/div>\n
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All in all, after reviewing the job-loss numbers, I\u2019ve come to one conclusion: There are no real winners or losers. Both sexes have been slammed.<\/div>\n
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Unemployment is a painfully high 8.3 percent for men and 8.1 percent for women.<\/div>\n
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For older Americans, the unemployment figures are slightly better: 6.3 percent for men over 55 and 5.9 percent for women of that age. But more than half of job seekers over 55 of both genders have been looking for work at least a year, on average, and that\u2019s a piercing reality.<\/div>\n
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My Job-Hunting Tip for Women<\/strong><\/div>\n
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If you\u2019re out of work because of a layoff, your best strategy may be to embrace contract or freelance work. MBO Partners’ “State of Independence in America,” a recent\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0of boomers who are independent workers, found that most of the estimated 5 million who\u2019ve gone out on their own enjoy it.<\/div>\n
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Freelance work has four real benefits (even if it doesn\u2019t usually come with health benefits or an employer-provided retirement plan):<\/div>\n