From the New York Times:

It started out as a “mancession”: Men’s unemployment rates have been higher than women’s for the last three years in the United States, as elsewhere. Now, women may be feeling more fear, if not more pain.

Their overall job prospects are lagging behind those of men, and they are likely to be more sharply affected by proposed cuts in federal, state and local spending.

Heather Boushey, an economist with the Center for American Progress, points out that since the economic recovery officially began in June 2009, private-sector employers have hired a net total of 503,000 men, while jobs held by women have declined by 141,000.

According to a new report by the National Women’s Law Center, women lost about 3 in every 10 jobs cut between December 2007 and June 2009 but filled fewer than 1 in every 10 jobs since job growth picked up in 2010.

Between January and February, unemployment rose slightly among women (to 8 percent from 7.9 percent) even as it declined slightly among men (to 8.7 percent from 8.8 percent).

This goes hand-in hand with Linda Greenhouse’s early musings that the recession, at which time 87% of the layoffs were of men, was going to be worse for women because they were entering the workforce in large numbers. As well as an article a while back about how hard it was on women when their husbands lost their job.

I’m not particularly anxious to get into the public sector union debate going on right now, but the gender make-up of those hit by it is particularly a non-issue. In that vein, the fact that it was men hit hardest by the recession was not paramount among my concerns. It sucks when people lose their jobs (however economically necessary it might be), regardless of gender. But I do find the efforts to take a recession that has brutally targeted men towards and shift the sob-story to women who are more likely to be employed and who have a full point to go before their unemployment numbers match that of men to be aggravating.