…tracing who’s faring the worst in the recession: young, poorly educated men.

The Great Recession has scrambled the timetable for the large-scale economic change already underway, the result of the surge in the number of highly educated women. The two forces, the recession and education gender imbalances, are somewhat related but have definitely become intertwined. Social trends that I consider important, the shifting economic power balances between men and women, are now taking place at a speed too fast to keep up with.

Understanding how these forces mix requires understanding the background of the education trends, and, as Crustyoldacademic reminds me, there’s no better background paper than this, The Homecoming of American College Women.

As prevously reported, the recession has not been easy on men, including the players, as the New York Times reports.

I’m not so sure that women are faring better than men in this recession because they are “worth less.” I can see that emerging as a feminist explanation for the rapid changes in the workforce, with 80% of the job losses affecting men and women passing men as the majority of the workforce.

But if that’s what you believe, you’ll find sustenance here in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. I’m not going to pretend to be an economist, but neither am I going to accept this explanation from a writer who embarrassed herself with the “opt-out revolution” cover story in the same magazine.

As a lay person who watches the economic developments, this one seems pretty straightforward: This is a combination of male-oriented professions suffering the most and women being better educated than men. Over time, I’m guessing that serious economists will discard the wage gap differential explanation. It’s an apples and oranges comparison. I mean, if cheaper female carpenters were being hired, I could understand…but I don’t see that happening.

Lisa Belkin’s piece:

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October 4, 2009
The Way We Live Now
The New Gender Gap
By LISA BELKIN
At first blush, the history of women in the workplace seems a trajectory of success. From the assumption that they would be secretaries to the expectation that they can be C.E.O.’s, they have crashed through ceilings (though not enough of them), made workplaces more flexible (not completely, but significantly) and transformed the face of work. They have gone from holding 34.9 percent of all jobs 40 years ago to 49.8 percent today. They are on track to hold more than half of them any moment now; it might have happened while you were reading this.

(more…)

That’s the suggested new term in this column. This is a decent attempt to look at the twin issues, boys falling behind in school and men falling behind in the economy. The two issues intertwine, but only at certain points. Where they become one issue is the bottom line: The social impact of men faltering will be greater than the economic impact.

The column:

chicagotribune.com
Education gap is leading to a ‘Great He-pression’
Greg Burns

September 28, 2009

What started as a “man-cession” is turning into a “Great He-pression.”

The unemployment rate for men is running 2.7 percentage points higher than for women — a “just unprecedented” spread, according to economist Mark Perry at the University of Michigan at Flint.

One obvious reason: The downturn has hammered manufacturing, construction and other male-dominated sectors, while going easier on female-heavy fields such as health care and educatio (more…)