One trend often-cited during the recession is that men have lost their jobs much quicker than women. Over the past 24 months, the number of female payroll employees fell 2.6 million, while the number of men fell 5.8 million. Intuitively, this makes perfect sense since the recession has heavily affected man-intensive manufacturing and construction industries, while also bringing educated women back into the workforce (according to the NYTimes). However, this relative surge in women's employment is not specific to the current recession. In fact, the same effect occurred during past recessions. Economist Casey Mulligan estimates recessions are the only times in recent history when women can significantly gain market share.
The recent NFP figures for January 2010 (specifically the revisions for past months) reveal an important event: for the first time, women have surpassed men on US payrolls.
In other words, more than 50% of the US workforce is now female. It'll be interesting to see whether this trend continues. Personally, I would like to see male employment grow, not for any prejudice to my own sex, but because that would mean some of the construction and manufacturing jobs we desperately need are finally showing signs of returning.
