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?

Flickr Creative Commons via s11ver

The Consumer Price Index for June was released today, telling us that some things we bought last month were more expensive than they used to be. I blogged about what the numbers mean for us in Chicago today on Medill Money Mavens.

The CPI considers the average price for a basket of goods and services bought by households across the country. Inside the hypothetical basket are prices we care about, like what it costs to pay rent, fill up our gas tanks and buy beer on Saturday night.

The CPI always reminds me of a cartoon I saw on Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid, where the Big Bad Wolf steals the basket that Little Red Riding Hood is taking to her grandmother. Unfortunately for him, it’s a volatile basket that explodes violently every time he says the words “Basket full of… BOOM… goodies.”

One of the “goodies” we get with the CPI is an idea of how much inflation is growing on the dollar. We can compare today’s basket with the price of a basket a year ago to tell if our money buys more or less than it did last June. Last month, the price of gasoline grew more significantly than other sectors.

When the Federal Reserve looks at the CPI to see if  inflation is growing, it removes the volatile stuff from the basket,  like energy and food prices. They fluctuate too much, just like gasoline did in June. If the Fed thinks inflation is getting higher than about 2 percent, they might raise the target interest rates to push it down.

The small rise in prices in June doesn’t necessarily mean inflation is taking off and economists don’t see the Fed raising interest rates any time soon, but it could mean that prices– and the economy– are beginning to stabilize.