Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280020
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REBECCA A. SMITH KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The simple fact that men are working less and women are working more, and often at low-paying jobs, is causing stress to families, researchers say, and contributing to the ``angry white male'' phenomenon. Federal researchers have plenty of disturbing news for men and the families that rely on them as breadwinners:
In each of the last five national recessions, men lost at least nine times as many jobs as women, and took longer to regain the number of jobs lost. That's because industries that are heavily male, such as mining, construction and manufacturing, experienced huge job losses.
The industries that have fared best during recessions - services and government - traditionally have had higher concentrations of women. So women have been better able to fill openings.
That would seem to make women the victors. But it's not that simple. Even though women have been picking up more jobs, many analysts say those jobs aren't as good as the ones men are losing.
For example, there's been an increase in low-wage service jobs. Nearly two-thirds of all minimum-wage workers are female and nearly 85 percent are adults, statistics that shatter the stereotype of minimum-wage work being mostly for entry-level teens. Even on a full-time basis, these women earn less than $9,000 a year.
During the most recent recession, from July 1990 to February 1992, women gained 50,000 jobs at a time when men lost 1.7 million jobs. The numbers include men who left the labor force through retirement, as well as those who were laid off.
``What we've seen is that the goods-producing sector is more easily automated or moved to another country,'' says economist William Goodman of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, who came up with these statistics in the preparation of two reports on labor market changes. ``This has really hurt men.''
Many men have found they don't have skills that can be transferred to areas where there's job growth, or they may feel the openings represent ``women's work'' or pay too little.
Health services is a good example. It's a sector that has grown during recessions and recoveries alike. As America's population ages, it will continue to grow.
But even as men were losing jobs in the most recent recession, 85 percent of the 250,000 people hired to new jobs in hospitals and nursing homes were women. More men are going into nursing, it's true, but still 94 percent of all registered nurses are women.
Even in sectors where women would seem to have no inherent advantage, they outperformed men in the sheer numbers of jobs gained. For example, 130,000 government jobs were created during the past recession. Even though employment in this sector is nearly evenly split, men gained only 15,000 jobs while women gained 115,000. These numbers exclude census workers, who are hired once each decade.
If the economy is broken into two large divisions - goods-producing and services-producing - the female ``advantage'' becomes apparent. A monthly survey of households by the Labor Department shows that only 12 percent of women are employed in the goods-producing sector, versus nearly 30 percent of men. Naturally, that makes men more susceptible to reversals in those industries.
Even in industries hit by job losses - like mining - women fare better than men. That's because most women who work for mining companies are clerical workers. In the 1980-1981 recession, according to Goodman, women suffered only a 4 percent job loss in the mining industry, even though they're 11 percent of the mining workforce. In other words, they held service-related jobs, even in a production-related industry.
Researchers examining these statistics say there's been an impact on American households.
``In general, it's been awful,'' says Barney Olmsted, co-director of New Ways to Work in San Francisco, a non-profit research group. ``Families are terribly stressed.''
Researchers say some of the pressure to support the family financially has shifted to women. They often find the expectations unwelcome.
A recent survey of 1,500 women, by Louis Harris & Associates for the Families and Work Institute of New York, found that 55 percent of employed women said they were responsible for half or more of the household income. The survey, titled ``Women: The New Providers,'' included single women, who would be expected to support themselves, but it also included a representative sample of married women with children.
Assumptions about who is the breadwinner and who is the nurturer, they say, are being challenged more forcefully than ever before.
In spite of the fact the woman's income has become essential to many households, married women overwhelmingly told researchers it was the husband's income that was the more important for providing family security.
``We were baffled by this,'' said Dana Friedman, co-president of the institute. ``It's men's jobs that are going by the wayside. Men are more likely to lose their jobs. But, perhaps it's better for the marital relationship to hold up that the man is still the breadwinner and that the women are still the nurturers.''
Another interpretation is that women believe the family is more secure if the man's job is secure. After all, women hold more jobs than ever before, partly because of the growth in so-called ``contingent labor'' - temporary jobs, often without benefits. Two-thirds of all contingent workers are women.
Given the shifts in the labor market, one might expect to see more men adjusting their occupations to fit the demand curve. But, so far, there's only fragmentary evidence that this is happening; thus men's unemployment remains above women's.
There are a few exceptions. There has been an upswing in men working in eating and drinking establishments, which have seen solid growth. In 1983, 12.2 percent of people waiting tables were men. It topped 20 percent in 1993, for one of the biggest increases. In that industry, men, on average, earn $52 more a week than women - $272 versus $220.
There are a few other categories in which men's percentages have grown: retail clerks, bank tellers, dental assistants, welfare workers, data entry clerks, sewing machine operators and dry cleaning workers, for example. But for every category in which men have gained ground, there are a dozen in which they've lost ground.
In public education, a sector that's seen good job growth, men's employment fell by roughly 5 percentage points from 1983 to 1993, as women took a larger share of new jobs.
``Both men and women are continuing to face fast-paced change,'' says Madeline Mixer, regional director in San Francisco for the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.
``The occupations that were heavily male are more in transition. We've had two decades of gut-wrenching change. I continue to think there's greater adjustment ahead for men. All of the growth will be in occupations equally open to men and women.''
Has this helped foster the ``angry white male'' phenomenon? ``To the extent men are angry,'' says Friedman at the Families and Work Institute, ``it should be directed away from women. Women have said they're more concerned about job loss for men than for themselves. Women aren't taking these jobs away, nor are they being lost because of affirmative action. They're simply being eliminated.''
She believes that men are going to have to reconcile themselves to many career changes in the course of their working lives and to competing against women for high-growth, though not necessarily top-paying, service-sector jobs.
``It requires a lot of get-up-and-go on the part of employees to make this adjustment,'' says Friedman. ``Nothing looks easy, anymore.''
by CNB