'Private sector job growth' under Obama turns out to mean many men taking jobs in retail that used to be done by women-USA Today

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"Hundreds of thousands of men are showing up in the once mostly female world of retailing."

1/2/12, "Men grab most new jobs, even 'women's work' in retailing," USA Today, Mullaney

"Men are claiming more than two-thirds of the private-sector jobs created as the economy recovers, reversing a long-running trend that came within a whisker of giving the USA its first-ever majority-female workforce.

In a wrinkle that puzzles economists, one important driver of the trend is that hundreds of thousands of men are showing up in the once mostly female world of retailing.

Nearly 1.28 million men gained jobs in the 12 months that ended in November, compared with 600,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Though men have returned to work in greater numbers in goods-producing jobs and service-related businesses,

• they're not returning to still-stagnant construction industries.

Instead, retailers have added 216,900 men — about five times as many as have been added by traditionally male financial services companies — vs. about 9,000 women. Also, manufacturers have added more than 250,000 men and cut 33,000 women.

"It's a testament to how difficult the job market is," said Moody's Analytics economist Ryan Sweet, noting that there are still 4.5 times more unemployed people than U.S. job openings.

• "Men are taking jobs you wouldn't think they would."

Women's share of U.S. jobs — private and government — peaked at 49.99% in October 2009 as layoffs racked construction and financial services. The percentage of

• women in workplaces is down to 49.4%, according to the BLS.

BLS economist Marcy Jacobs said the agency hasn't studied why new jobs are skewing male, but a leader of a research group on working families said the shift is a pendulum swing after men took the brunt early in the recession....

The most important factor pushing men into new fields may be the looming expiration of unemployment benefits, Sweet said.

"They decide, do you drop out of the labor force

• or take anything you can?" he said."

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Ed. note: The article's first paragraph uses the phrase, "as the economy recovers," meaning the economy is recovering or could be recovering. It doesn't provide evidence that this is so. I've read nothing to suggest the US economy will ever recover. Certainly the housing market will never recover. A strong US economy would require a strong middle class and the middle class has been targeted for extinction. It's better to be realistic about these things. If more women need jobs and can't get them it will probably help Obama. In 2008 70% of all single women voted for him:

4/1/2010, "Single women voted by better than two to one for Obama over McCain (70-29 percent). In a post-election analysis, the polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosser concluded: “Barack Obama would have lost the women’s vote and the 2008 election if it were not for the contribution of the unmarried woman. All told, Obama split men 49-48 percent, but lost married women 47-50 percent. Unmarried women, however, delivered 70 percent of their vote to the Democratic candidate, up from 62 percent in 2004."...

April 1, 2010, "The Obama Coalition," The Atlantic, Thomas Byrne Edsall (item cited about a third into the article) The elimination of the middle class is seen by social engineers as utopia.

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11/1/2011, "Americans’ Incomes Have Dropped 6.7 Percent During the ‘Recovery’," Jeffrey H. Anderson, Weekly Standard

"New evidence suggests there’s a reason why this economic “recovery” hasn’t felt much like a recovery. Figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession from which they’ve allegedly been recovering.

According to Sentier’s report, the median American household income has actually fallen during the “recovery.” Not only that, but it has fallen even more than it did during the recession. Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the report (with fellow Census veteran John Coder), says, “Real income fell by 3.2 percent during [the recession]. And during the recovery it went down by 6.7 percent.” So “income [has] declined twice as much in the recovery as in the recession itself.”

According to the report — which has been referenced by both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times — in early 2000, Americans’ median annual household income was $55,836, in real (inflation-adjusted, June 2011) dollars. By the start of the recession (in December 2007), Americans’ real incomes had fallen 0.9 percent, to $55,309 — a decline of $527. During the recession (which ended in June 2009), their incomes fell an additional 3.2 percent, to $53,518 — a decline of another $1,791. During the first two years of the “recovery” (from June 2009 to June 2011), they fell an additional 6.7 percent, to $49,909 —

• a decline of another $3,609.

So, from the start of 2000 to mid-2011, the typical American household’s real income dropped nearly $6,000 — and more than 60 percent of that drop (over $3,600) came after the start of the “recovery” and thus squarely on Obama’s watch.

While the real median income of American households dropped 6.7 percent during the first two years of the “recovery,” the incomes of many households dropped even more than that. The income drop was steeper for those under 25 years of age (their incomes were down 9.5 percent), for those between 25 and 34 years of age (down 9.8 percent), for black Americans (down 9.4 percent), for families with three or more children (down 9.5 percent), and for families headed by part-time workers (down 11.5 percent). And that’s despite the fact that the report’s income tallies include unemployment compensation and monetary public assistance (both state and federal).

In fact, the anemic economy has meant that Americans’ incomes have declined during the “recovery” even without adjusting for inflation. According to Green, in actual (non-inflation-adjusted) dollars, the median American household income was $51,140 at the start of the “recovery,” but it fell to $49,909 two years later.

Suffice it to say, such declining incomes are giving new meaning to the word “recovery.”"

via Lucianne and WZ