But what about the dudes?!

If you saw this chart at the top of the article, what might you think the headline would be? "Women make gains in the labor force up to the 1990s"? Or "Employment dips affect both men and women"? Well you'd be wrong. Because it's another "OMG, the dudes are losing teh jobz!" You'll notice the line for the women is dipping too, and wasn't climbing as steeply as the men's before the downturn. But I guess we don't care about that. What are some of the causes, who can be blame?

 

"Demand for workers who haven't much education—which includes many men, particularly minority-group men—is waning."

 

Really, you mean an educated workforce is more in demand than a non-educated workforce? I had no idea. And who's fault is this?

 

"Women have suffered less in this recession. They were more likely to be in health care and other jobs that weren't hit as hard as construction and manufacturing. They are increasingly likely to have the education so often required to get or keep a good job these days."

 

That's right, those wimminz decided to get themselves educated, and work in lower paying fields like education and healthcare. How dare they! I'm also glad the WSJ can quantify women's comparative suffering. I guess if your higher paying husband loses his job and you're now the only support for your family you've definitely suffered less than your husband who's now sitting at home watching TV all day. ("On average, surveys find, the unemployed in the U.S. spend 40 minutes a day looking for work and 3 hours and 20 minutes a day watching TV.")

 

"That's good for their families. But will there be good-paying jobs in the future for prime-age men, particularly the ones who don't go to college?"

 

Silly me I always thought what was good for the family would be...good for the family. I had no idea we didn't care so much about the family, only the menz. And clearly the way to obsess over this is not to worry about what's stopping lower income or minority males from going to college, nope, let's worry about the wimminz taking their jobs instead.

 

"A third option is surrender to market forces and tax the winners to subsidize the losers. Sending checks to idle men is unappealing, but the government could do more to supplement wages (or health insurance costs) for those who work at low wages."

 

I'm so glad that government money to support "welfare moms" is completely unacceptable in this society but we'll gladly send money to unemployed men (guess we don't care about the unemployed women) who didn't bother to educate themselves. Yes instead of supporting programs that would educate this workforce and help transition it for a new economy let's just send extra money to a bunch of loafers. Good call WSJ; Now I know what your brand of conservatism is all about.