JTF.ORG Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: briann on May 18, 2009, 06:52:39 PM
-
http://www.reuters.com/article/economicNews/idUSN1450507420090518
U.S. male unemployment rate surges past national average
* Blue collar men take worst hit, wages keep falling
* Construction may recover; many assembly jobs are gone
By Ed Stoddard
DALLAS, May 19 (Reuters) - Rodney Ringler is an unemployed blue collar male without a college degree. He's hardly alone. Men like him have been the main victims of the current recession in the United States.
"I haven't worked since December of 2007, around the time this recession started," Ringler, a 49-year-old computer technician, said as he walked his dog in a Dallas suburb.
He sees little light at the end of the tunnel.
"I've been looking to get into law enforcement because it's a growth area," he said, but had no immediate prospects.
One statistic that stands out in America's recession-stung economy is the unemployment rate for adult men: in April for the second month in a row it surged ahead of the national average to 9.4 percent versus 8.9 percent for all workers. The jobless rate for adult women was 7.1 percent.
The reasons are clear: male-heavy sectors such as construction and manufacturing have been hard hit. But the implications may be dire for the broader economy and hamper the recovery as families that once had male breadwinners struggle.
"In the 2001 recession, 51 percent of all job losses were for men. It was evenly split. But in this recession 80 percent of the jobs that have been lost have been men's," said Andrew Sum, a labor economics professor at Northeastern University who has studied this issue in detail.
Men also incurred about 80 percent of the job losses in the 1990-91 recession, but Sum said by his calculations the numbers this time were dramatically different. In the 1990-91 recession, men lost 1.037 million jobs. They have lost 4.5 million to date in this one.
"This time around it is amazingly different in terms of the magnitude," Sum said.
It's difficult to compare to earlier recessions because women entered the workforce in big numbers from the 1970s, and industries that continue to grow such as health services favor women.
The male jobless rate is pumped up by white collar banking jobs lost during the global financial crisis. A few of these may have been sent overseas but job growth in this sector should come back in time, analysts said.
-
It seems that companies are turning their backs on skilled labor and opting for having one or two key people and low paying minorities to do the grunt work. The construction industry is very bad when it comes to this sort of thing. While it does get the job done at a cheaper price the work is often of poorer quality. Look at the situation in the airline industry where one of the pilots flying the plane that crashed in upstate NY was getting 16 bucks an hour. Between the two pilots their skill level was so poor they actually made the situation worse crashing the plane and killed everyone on board. It seems that skilled labor has become a luxury most employers are not willing to pay for.
-
In the engineering department where I work we need skilled workers... Though my company is multinational and we employ people from around the world we have very few unskilled minorities {actually none}. I would recommend that any young people should stay in school and learn a profession. I am still in demand in my industry and from time to time I get calls from headhunters looking for skilled software engineers.
-
Don't blame me....I've always taken the child care and social work/in home caregiving type type work since I got out of the military, all under paying jobs usually with no benefits.
I do feel bad for the guys though, losing their good paying jobs.
Alot of work is being taken outside the US. Every time I call tech support for Qwest, I end up in Honduras or India for hours with someone. Its NEVER someone from the USA> >:(
Especially those with wives and children at home to support. I have a lot of respect for those men.
-
Yes men who work hard to provide for and protect their families and are loving to their families deserve our respect.
-
Yes, cuz some dont....
Yes men who work hard to provide for and protect their families and are loving to their families deserve our respect.
-
The recession is a scapegoat in this particular case. Outsourcing is the real culprit. Why pay human beings a human wage when you have 160 million underage girls in slave-labor camps that will work for free (besides the tax to their Marxist government)?
-
This is a shame, because no doubt the American worker has been sold out by greed and the desire of cooperate crooks to employ illegal aliens in order to save a buck.
-
This is a shame, because no doubt the American worker has been sold out by greed and the desire of cooperate crooks to employ illegal aliens in order to save a buck.
This is EXACTLY what's happening. And with Obamanation in office, it's going to come to where they will TELL you what you'll be making, and if you don't like it, out you go, because jobs will be so scarce.