The Mancession

Last quarter, during a stock market game for class, my team put our imaginary money on men. Fratty college men, to be precise. We divvied up our pretend $10,000 between beer and fast-food companies, video game stocks and trendy True Religion jeans. We thought men would keep spending, oblivious to the hard times. And we were mostly right. We didn’t do as well as some groups, but our portfolio, “Immature Male Investments,” beat the S&P.

Though some young men are still spending on non-essentials, many are suffering as  historically male jobs like construction taking hard hits in what we’ve nicknamed our y-chromosome woes: the “mancession.”

Are the gentlemen among us taking the hardest hit? For June, it certainly looked that way. The latest unemployment statistics show the unemployment rate for men was at 10.0 while the unemployment rate for women was at 7.6 for June.

But just because men seem to be disproportionately affected, “that doesn’t mean these are boom times for women,” according to an article in Newsweek by Nancy Cook. While they’re losing less jobs, women only make about 78 cents per dollar and are more likely to have jobs without benefits or retirement savings, according to the article.

Now, who did you say was missing out?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Recessioncents, indicators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.