Reclaiming Common Sense

Women Have Added More Jobs Since the Recession than Men


There are a number of ways to examine the Employment Situation Report, or Jobs Report, Data. The data that was released last Friday was for the month of September. This column projected that we should see non-seasonally adjusted workers fall and jobs improve. It was also projected that rate fall and the participation rate improve. Once the data was released the analysis began. There is more than one way to evaluate the data.

  • "September Jobs Up, Workers Down" examined the Current Population Survey (CPS) data and the Current Employment Statistics (CES) data.
  • "Five Presidents after Eight Month: Trumponomics" compared the CPS data for Presidents Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama with President Trump. President Trump has added more jobs than any of those predecessors while reducing unemployment and reducing the number of part-time jobs.
  • We were able to increase jobs and reduce workers because more people were working multiple jobs during September than were working multiple jobs during August. "Multiple Job Holders Fall during September" details how up is down here, too. The number of people working multiple jobs fell from September to September for the first time in five years.
  • We saw a huge surge of over 1 million government workers added to the workforce. This went unreported because the seasonally adjusted7,000 government workers were added. The article "September Government Super Surge (Part 1) details the changes on a month to month, September to September, and September 2007 to September 2017 perspective.
  • Did we lose workers, or ADD workers, seasonally adjusted. last month? There has been a generally unrecognized surge in Trade, Transportation, Utility sector, the Education and Health Sector, and a surge in the Leisure and Hospitality Sector. "September Government Worker Super Surge (Part 2)" details how we could have seen 1,000,0000 seasonally adjusted workers be  reported as being added last month, using the seasonal factors from 2010 through 2013.

This column regularly publishes an article on the "War on (Wo)Men." We heard about "binders filled with women" during the 2012 election and how there has been a war on women. The truth is that women lost fewer full-time jobs than men during the recession.  The truth is that women recovered their lost jobs faster than men recovered their lost jobs. Women have added more jobs since their recovery than men.


Women have added nearly 4 million Full-time Jobs to their July 2007 Pre-Recession Peak. The peak month for jobs, prior to the Great Recession, was July 2007. Women had lost 3.8 million full-time jobs by February of 2010. The had recovered those lost full-time jobs by the Fall of 2015.


Men have only added 0.4 million full-time jobs since July 2007. That is not a typographical error. Women have added 4 million full-time jobs and men have added 400,000 full-time jobs. Men have added more part-time jobs than full-time jobs since the recession. The problem here is that we have added only 2.6 million jobs for over 11 million new male workers.


We are at levels of unemployment not seen since January 2006. Yes unemployment was slightly lower during this Summer. Unemployment tends to be lower during the Summer. There are 1 million fewer unemployed workers, men and women combined, compared to July 2007.


Participation is still near recent lows for both men and women. Workforce participants are those who are employed or unemployed. a part-time job work is a single participant as is a full-time employee, as is an unemployed employee. We had 85 million males participating in the economy and 75 million women participating. Men are participating more than they were during September 2014, 2015, and 2016. Women are participating more than they were during September 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. We are nowhere near the peak participation seen prior to  the recession.


What is the True Unemployment Rate for Men? For Women? The "Obama Slide" Saw unemployment fall because participation fell. Unemployment is a subset of participation. If people were trading unemployment checks for payroll checks then participation would have held constant. People were trading participating as unemployed workers to becoming "non-participants" or "effectively unemployed." You can see the slide for men and women in the participation rate graph. Can you compare the 4.37% unemployment rate we had during September 2006 with the 4.07% that we had during September of 2017? The participation rate was 66.09% during September 2006 compared to the 63.02% participation rate during September 2017.  The effective unemployment rate (U-7) based on the 2006 level is 8.54% versus the official 4.07%. The U-7 calculation stated with the "Four Presidents" series and has been a part of this series.


Same Male Unemployment Level as September 2006? Not Really. Supposedly we have a non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3.97% now compared to the 4.01% unemployment rate during September 2006. The 4.13% difference in the participation rate and the growth in potential male workers from 110.9 million to 123.5 million means that we have over 5 million missing participants who are effectively unemployed. The U-7 participation rate, for comparison purpose, is 9.37%. When the same process is applied to the September 206 data for women the U-7 is calculated at 7.56% not the official non-seasonally adjusted U-3 unemployment rate of 4.18%, Nearly 3 million women are effectively unemployed. We may see a time that we have no effectively unemployed workers as participation continues to improve month to month or year to year.


It's the economy.