US women regain all lost jobs, men still 2.1 million short

The slowly recovering US economy has had women rebounding faster than men when it comes to combating unemployment. Women have recovered all the jobs they lost in the recession, whereas men are still short - by over 2.1 million jobs. [caption id=“attachment_1106783” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] The gender gap, which is expected to persist till the economy revives fully, is being attributed to the different industries that men and women tend to work in. Women tend to work in lower-wage industries, such as retail, education, restaurants and hotels, which have been hiring faster than others. On the other hand, men tend to dominate industries such as construction and manufacturing, which haven’t yet recovered the millions of jobs which were lost during the recession. “It’s a segregated labor market, and men and women do work in different industries, and even in different areas within industries,” says Heidi Hartmann, an economist and president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, to NPR . “The gap was evident in the August unemployment rates: 6.8 percent for women, 7.7 percent for men,” reported Time magazine . “In August, 68 million women said they were employed, passing the 67.97 million who had jobs when the recession began in December 2007, the government says. Among men 76.2 million were employed last month, down from 78.3 million in December 2007.” According to the report, women have made big gains in professional and business services, a grab-bag category that includes architects, engineers, information technology workers and temps. Women also make up more than half of the workforce in hotels and restaurants, which has posted the third-largest gain of any industry.