Little noted among the employment figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a growing gap between women’s and men’s employment as the recovery proceeds. Men gained 136,000 payroll jobs in July, at the same time women lost 19,000. A fact sheet released by the Institute for Women's Policy Research shows that throughout the recovery men have been gaining a disproportionate share of the jobs, even taking into account that men lost many more jobs than women in what was dubbed the “mancession.”

IWPR research shows that men have gained 27.8 percent (1.7 million) of the jobs they lost since November 2007 (6.1 million) while women have regained only 10.8 percent (281,000) of the total jobs they lost due to the recession (2.6 million from November 2007 to September 2010, the low-point for women’s employment). While the jobs recovery is slow for both men and women, men are at least showing gains. In fact, men are regaining jobs at nearly three times the speed of women while women’s employment has been virtually flat for more than 12 months.

As a result of the recession, women’s and men’s payroll employment reached parity in October 2009 as men lost many more jobs than did women. But in the recovery, the employment gap between women and men has not only reappeared but continues to grow. The jobs gap between women and men is now 1.5 million jobs.