Job Growth Isn’t Just a Women’s Issue
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Mitt Romney has been saying all along that he wants smaller government. On Tuesday, he added that he was angry that so many women have lost jobs in the last three years.
But one thing that happens when you shrink government is that women lose jobs.
That’s the fundamental political and economic paradox that Mr. Romney is facing. As my colleague Trip Gabriel reports, Mr. Romney has been pointing to the fact that 92.3 percent of the net total of jobs lost since President Obama took office in January 2009 belonged to women.
The net number of jobs held by women has fallen by 683,000 since Mr. Obama’s inauguration, while those held by men have fallen by 57,000. But the statistic is misleading for several reasons.
First, women have lost a lot of jobs in the last three years, but men lost far more jobs during the recession. For this reason, the great recession has also been nicknamed the “mancession.”
Comments