Business columns: Jobless men need their own stimulus

David Paul Kuhn

The Wall Street Journal

It was big news when the national unemployment rate topped 10 percent last month, said David Paul Kuhn. But the sad fact is that “male workers crossed this same threshold six months earlier,” with far less fanfare; the unemployment rate for men now stands at 11.4 percent. Never before has a modern-day U.S. recession “fallen more disproportionately on one gender.”

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The “he-cession,” as some wags now call it, “is fundamentally a product of our times” because some of the hardest-hit corners of the economy, including manufacturing and construction, are “overwhelmingly male sectors.” Nevertheless, the plight of jobless males has drawn only “limited attention” from Washington. In fact, stimulus dollars “were disproportionately directed away” from major new infrastructure spending—“in part because women’s groups such as the National Organization for Women lobbied hard against the president’s proposed ‘shovel ready’ stimulus program.” As a result, nearly half of the jobs created by the stimulus spending went to women, which is “about twice women’s estimated job losses.”

Men don’t need to start seeing themselves as “victims,” but they should be demanding that any new jobs bills be structured “to address the wave of male unemployment.” It’s only fair. “As the feminist movement taught us, what happens to one gender happens to us all.”