Post-Recession Gains and Losses by Women

The Great Recession that ended the previous decade is sometimes referred to as the “Mancession” because it inflicted such a severe impact on male employment. This recession was brought on by a collapse of the housing market, and that in turn led to a severe reduction in worker demand within the heavily male construction industry. Making matters worse, the recession accelerated the job-diminishing effects of automation and offshoring in manufacturing, another heavily male domain. Service jobs, where women dominate, suffered less from this recession.

As the economy has slowly recovered from the recession, male and female gains have been uneven. How you compare them depends partly on how you define employment. Although the unemployment rate for women is now lower than the rate for men, the jobs women have regained in the recovery are more often lower-paying, part-time, and not self-employed.

I thought it would be interesting to look at a different measure than unemployment rate, earnings, or hours of work. Instead, I was curious about changes in the percentage of women in various occupations. Using figures from the Current Population Survey for 2007 and 2010, I created the following two tables. Because changes to very small occupations affect only a very small number of workers, I looked only at occupations that had workforces of more than 100,000 wage and salary workers in 2010.

The first table shows the 10 occupations that had the greatest gains, in percentage terms, between the 2007 percentage of female workers and the 2010 percentage.

Title	2007	2010	2010 Workforce	Gain
Highway Maintenance Workers	0.5%	2.3%	142,530	360%
Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics	0.7%	1.8%	587,510	157%
Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians	2.1%	3.8%	117,510	81%
First-Line Supervisors/ Managers of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers	5.4%	8.7%	415,900	61%
Network and Computer Systems Administrators	14.7%	22.3%	333,210	52%
Engineers, All Other	10.0%	13.8%	139,610	38%
Electricians	1.7%	2.2%	514,760	29%
Administrative Services Managers	32.7%	40.9%	240,320	25%
Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers	10.6%	13.0%	110,320	23%
Library Technicians	62.3%	76.4%	109,240	23%

All of these are occupations that either require a lot of hands-on work or work with high tech. (Library Technicians these days spend a lot of time with databases rather than shelving books.) The increase of women working as Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians may partly reflect the downsizing of the military as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have wound down; women working in this occupation overwhelmingly come from a military background. Regarding Highway Maintenance Workers, my guess is that this occupation gained many workers because of funding from President Obama’s stimulus package.

The next table shows the 10 occupations that had the greatest declines in female participation in the workforces.

Title	2007	2010	2010 Workforce	Decline
Telecommuni-cations Line Installers and Repairers	7.5%	3.7%	156,350	-51%
Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators	2.7%	1.5%	334,730	-44%
Civil Engineers	11.5%	7.1%	249,120	-38%
Fire Fighters	5.3%	3.4%	302,400	-36%
Sheet Metal Workers	3.7%	2.5%	131,600	-32%
Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists	1.1%	0.8%	222,770	-27%
Construction Managers	8.1%	5.9%	191,430	-27%
Cost Estimators	15.4%	11.4%	183,790	-26%
Parts Salespersons	17.4%	13.2%	201,610	-24%
Parking Lot Attendants	15.4%	11.8%	124,590	-23%

All of these occupations have traditionally been dominated by male workers, and many of the occupations are in the heavily male construction and manufacturing industries. Because many of the women who have been working in these occupations were hired there only recently, their job losses reflect the tendency of distressed businesses to lay off workers with the least seniority.

As the recovery continues, it will be interesting to see how the male-female balances recalibrate. I hope to post an update as newer demographic statistics become available.