Men are struggling in this economy, but it's not just because they're men

(EPI)

Bloomberg?s Mike Dorning rightly calls the statistics on employment statistics among American men ?bleak.? There?s really no contesting that when you consider facts like these:

The portion of men holding a job—any job, full- or part-time—fell to 63.5 percent in July, hovering stubbornly near the low point of 63.3 percent it reached in December 2009. These are the lowest numbers in statistics going back to 1948.

Among the critical category of prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs, a barely noticeable improvement from its low point last year, and still well below the depths of the 1982-83 recession, when employment among prime-age men never dropped below 85 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, consider that in 1969, 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job.

Also:

Men who do have jobs are getting paid less. After accounting for inflation, median wages for men between 30 and 50 dropped 27 percent--to $33,000 a year from 1969 to 2009, according to an analysis by Michael Greenstone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who was chief economist for Obama?s Council of Economic Advisers.

But while I agree with Dorning that this is a bleak picture, I don?t think his attempts at explanation get the whole picture. Dorning focuses on education and job training, suggesting that women have lost less ground in this economy because they are adapting better, getting more education and training that helps them in the job market, and that in general the men who are suffering are the ?moderately skilled? ones, without college degrees (or with degrees from less selective colleges) or training at skilled manual labor.

The comparison with women is sort of a red herring, though. Anytime you?re talking about employment patterns beginning in the 1970s or earlier, women are going to have gained ground, because so few women were in the workplace until the past couple of decades. Women still lag behind men on a variety of measures, overall, so if we?ve lost less ground it?s partly because we had less ground to lose to begin with. So it?s just impossible to compare employment measures for men and women for anything but the very recent past, and even there you have to make a lot of allowances for a gender gap that has narrowed but not been eliminated.

There?s a bigger problem, though. Dorning even has the answer almost in his grasp:

?There?s really been this polarization in the middle,? Katz says, as men at the top of the education and income scale see their earnings rise while those in the middle gravitate downward.

But then he lets it slip away, going off on another discussion of skills and education and how this is why men are falling behind. But, as the EPI chart above shows, difficulties in the labor market aren?t just afflicting moderately skilled men:

As the chart shows, there was a very large increase in underemployment even among workers with a bachelor?s degree or more education, growing from 3.9% in December 2007 to 8.4% in March 2011. In fact, the percentage increase in this underemployment rate was greater for workers with a bachelor?s degree or more than for all other education categories.

The fact that the economy?s best-educated workers have seen a more than doubling in their underemployment rate is just one of many pieces of evidence suggesting that the anemic recovery reflects a general lack of job growth rather than a deficit of skills or education among its workers.

In other words, it?s not about a specific segment of men or even all men, except insofar as historically men are the comparison point when you look at workforce statistics. We?re looking at a problem with the economy and the availability of jobs. The polarization of those at the top doing very well while the middle stagnates or falls isn?t about men, it?s about a shift in the organization of our economy. It?s not that, as Dorning suggests, ?Employers are increasingly giving up on the American man,? it?s that employers are increasingly driving down wages and benefits here, sending jobs overseas for cheaper labor, and avoiding hiring whenever they possibly can. That fact may show up most when you look at men?s employment patterns, but it?s not just about them.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/afy_zJ3PMwg/-Men-are-struggling-in-this-economy,-but-its-not-just-because-theyre-men

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