What Is a Mancession?

Question: What Is a Mancession?

You may have seen the phrase mancession in an article or heard it on the news, and wondered what it means. The answer may seem simple, but the context can help you understand how recessions can affect men and women differently.

Answer: The term mancession was coined during the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, as a way to succinctly convey that the bulk of job losses hit men at the beginning of the recession. With layoffs disproportionately occurring in male-dominated industries like construction, finance and manufacturing, unemployment among men rose much more quickly than among women. But the question, "what is a mancession" becomes a bit more complex when you explore the details of job losses and unemployment during this period of the economy.

At the beginning of the recession, both men and women experienced an unemployment rate of about 5 percent. But the male unemployment rate shot up to 11.4 percent in October 2009, while the female unemployment rate only rose to 8.8 percent.

Women were initially protected from the kind of mass layoffs seen in male-dominated fields, because they tend to hold stable and good jobs in education, local government and health care. However, after the recession dragged on and government revenue started to dip, women also lost their jobs because of local government cutbacks.

An analysis by the National Women's Law Center in September 2012 found that since the economic recovery began in June 2009, job losses in the public sector wiped out 45 percent of women's labor market progress. That is, while women gained 999,000 private sector jobs, they lost 450,000 positions in the public sector.

While the phrase mancession may seem to be a good thing for women, the true picture is more nuanced. Both men and women suffered because of the Great Recession.