Gender differences in the labour market

The gendered story of the post GFC labour market is interesting. The standard narrative is that men benefited more from the boom before the GFC, but were more impacted by the GFC.

Since the GFC, it appears that men have benefited from the recovery more than women. Right at the moment, the male unemployment rate is trending down while the female rate is trending up.

If I had to guess at an explanation, I would theorise that men do better from the mining boom and related construction activity, while women bear the brunt of austerity measures and belt tightening in the public sector.

But my theories might be crap. Men might just get a better unemployment rate by having more of their number leave the labour market when things are down. With a little irony, it might be a case of, "when the going gets tough the tough get going". As the next chart shows, the male employment to population ratio has been more adversely affected since the GFC, in comparison with the female ratio.

Let's call it man-flu.