Downturn Continues to Target Men
Here's the latest from the unemployment front (The New York Times, 7/2/09). The June figures have been reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics here, and show that unemployment has reached 9.5%, up slightly from 9.4% last month.
The article linked to is a long piece and includes lots of information, so it's interesting that it leaves out one thing - the gender breakdown of unemployment. The BLS data include that, and it's right near the top of the BLS's summary, so the Times writers could have reported it easily, but didn't.
So I will.
Men's unemployment rose to 0.2% to 10% in June, while women's unemployment ticked up 0.1% to 7.6%.
Just so you'll know.
Accompanying this data is the news that the Obama stimulus plan doesn't seem to be working very well. Time was when the administration claimed unemployment would level off at about 8%, so June's 467,000 lost jobs compared with 322,000 in May came as quite a shock.
Last week I quoted Christina Hoff Sommers reporting the administration's cave-in to feminist demands to spend a greater share of the stimulus money on women's jobs. That resulted in 42% of the stimulus package being directed at women's jobs, when only about 20% of job losses have been borne by women.
It's just a guess on my part, but maybe the failure of the Obama stimulus has something to do with its targeting the wrong sector of the job market. In this case, kowtowing to feminists was clearly lousy economics, and I'd say it's lousy politics too. Obama may want to ask himself just who those feminists are going to vote for in 2012 - a Republican? A doctrinaire, anti-choice Republican, or Barack Obama? I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that question, so why doesn't the president?
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