US women have recovered all the jobs they lost to the Great Recession. The same can't be said for men, who remain 2.1 million jobs short.
The biggest factor is that men dominate construction and manufacturing industries that have not recovered millions of jobs lost during the downturn. By
contrast, women have made up a disproportionate share of workers in those that have been hiring retail, education, health care, restaurants and hotels.
"It's a segregated labour 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.
The gap was evident in the August unemployment rates: 6.8 per cent for women, 7.7 per cent for men.
In August, 68 million women said they were employed, passing the more than 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.
