The death of the male working class

29 May 2010

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This recession is a global ‘mancession’, says Matthew Lynn, with male-dominated industries collapsing and women getting a greater share of new jobs. But if work is turning into a female domain, what are we going to do with all the redundant men?

Remember the feminist slogans of the 1970s? Phrases such as ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ and ‘Adam and Even’ sounded comic at the time. Now, 40 years on, they seem less like the absurd hopes of the dungaree-clad sisterhood, and more like shrewd insights into the economic future. The once preposterous-sounding idea that women would outnumber men in the workplace is now a reality. It has just happened in America and, if current trends persist, it will happen in Britain in four years time.

Recessions tend to accelerate pre-existing economic trends, and this recession seems to be hastening the demise of the male working class. The jobs lost in the last two years have tended to be ones done by men, whereas the preponderance of new vacancies are in areas of the economy in which women do best.

Some American economists have already dubbed the current slump a ‘mancession’. The upturn, when it comes, is probably going to be a ‘fecovery’ with women taking a greater share of new jobs. More and more men might find themselves unemployable. That throws up lots of questions that society has hardly begun to consider. What is going to happen to a lot of redundant men? How might families cope with the stress of women becoming the main breadwinners? Can anything be done to make men more employable again?

A textbook of global economic history written a century from now may well mark February 2010 as a crucial point in the feminisation of the western world. When US employment data for that month was published, economists noticed that, for the first time, there were more women working in America than men — 64.2 million compared to 63.4 million, to be precise. That represents a huge demographic shift: in 1950, more than twice as many men had jobs as women.

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