NPR, August 18, 2020: How The Pandemic Is Making The Gender Pay Gap Worse
“Mancession” might sound like the name of an awful jazz fusion band, but it’s a term that the economist Mark Perry helped coin a decade ago. It described how the Great Recession, like the three recessions before it, disproportionately hurt men.
In typical recessions, consumers cut back spending on expensive items like cars, refrigerators, computers and houses, which ravages manufacturing, construction and other industries that disproportionately employ men. Men’s unemployment numbers shoot up. Meanwhile, female-dominated professions in areas such as education, health care and in-person services tended to be more recession-proof. And, in what’s known as “the second-earner effect,” many women actually enter the labor force or increase their work hours during recessions as a way to help their families while the primary male breadwinner struggles. This helps tamp down the female unemployment rate.
