Men’s and women’s roles have changed dramatically over the last four decades: Since 1965, the number of hours that men spend on childcare has tripled, and while the number of full-time stay-at-home dads is still minuscule, the direction is clear–it went up two and a half times from 1995 to 2007, to 159,000.
But social crises have a way of accelerating existing trends. Take women in the workforce. Though American women had already ditched their corsets and won suffrage, it took the demands of World War II to propel a generation of American “Rosies” onto the factory floor.
Now, thanks to the recession, we may be at just such another socio-sexual inflection point. It’s impossible to know how job losses will eventually reshape our culture, but a few trends are already striking.
We’ve heard a lot over the years about the increase in women in the workforce, and the numbers are indeed dramatic: The percentage of adult American women who are employed climbed from about 37% in 1965 to about 55% in 2008, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Bureau of Economic Research. We hear less concerning the percentage of adult American men who are employed, which fell from about 81% in 1965 to 69% in 2008. The share of men in the United States with a job is at its lowest point ever.
That long-term trend is now accelerating. Since the current recession began in December 2007, men have lost the vast majority of jobs. Of the 5.1 million jobs that have disappeared, a full 20% have been lost in construction, almost entirely by men. Another 20.6% of jobs have been lost in male-dominated manufacturing. Meanwhile, employment in the female-dominated fields of education and health services has increased by 12% since the recession began. In total, 78% of the jobs lost in this recession have been lost by men, according to BLS statistics compiled by Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress. (Men comprised only about 54% of the workforce going into the recession.)
That may end up making a woman the family breadwinner in more households. But something else even more unusual is also going on: Men are not merely becoming unemployed in greater numbers than ever before. They are actually dropping out of the labor force at greater rates than before, which is different.
The unemployment rate we hear so much about–now 8.5% across the U.S.–is measured as a percentage of those who are available for work and seeking it. (The definition is pretty strict–to be considered unemployed, you must have actively sought work in the previous four weeks, for instance by sending out a resume or contacting a potential employer.) But in addition to measuring the number of Americans who are employed and the number who are unemployed but seeking work, the BLS tallies a third category every month: the number of people who have withdrawn from the labor force, meaning that they don’t have a job and are no longer looking.
Every month, some people move from being unemployed to being out of the labor force. In December of 2007, the BLS reported that 844,000 women and 652,000 men had moved into this “stopped looking” category in the preceding month. The gender gap between those numbers is in keeping with historical norms. “Traditionally when women have lost their jobs, they have been more likely to simply exit the labor force,” says Boushey. Often those women become full-time stay-at-home parents. “The social costs aren’t as challenging as they continue to be for men.”
But social costs or not, men are now doing the same thing. “What’s striking about this recession is that the number of men who drop out of the labor force is about the same as for women. That’s just not normal,” says Boushey, who has written extensively on family and labor issues.
In March 2009, the BLS reported that 1,162,000 women and 1,238,000 men had shifted from “looking” to “stopped looking” in the preceding month. So not only are men and women now exiting the labor force at roughly equal rates, but if current trends continue, men will start doing so even more. The increase in the number of women dropping out from December 2007 to March 2009 was 38%. The increase in the number of men dropping out was 90%.
To be sure, the accelerating male drop-out rate may be due to men believing there is no work left in certain fields, rather than a burning desire to change diapers. Still, these numbers will likely have all kinds of ramifications over the long term, from transforming who does what in the family to remaking federal labor law. For now I’ll just note that the recession seems to be kicking our seismic long-term shift in gender roles into high gear.
Elisabeth Eaves is a deputy editor at Forbes, where she also writes a weekly column.