Faculty Publications

Occupations An The Cyclical Behavior Of Gender Unemployment Rates

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Occupations, Recession, Unemployment

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of Socio-Economics

Volume

31

Issue

3

First Page

287

Last Page

299

Abstract

The men's unemployment rate first exceeded the women's during the recession of the 1980s, a pattern repeated in the 1990s recession. During non-recession years, this gender difference disappeared. We use data disaggregated by occupational categories and show that occupational distribution is critical for explaining the behavior of gender unemployment rates. Although women's rates are consistently higher than men's within occupations, the gender distribution across occupations favor lower rates for women. In recessions, the unemployment rates rise for both genders, but the occupational distribution shifts in favor of women's employment. For expansionary periods, these two effects are offsetting. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Department

Department of Economics

Original Publication Date

11-27-2002

DOI of published version

10.1016/S1053-5357(02)00127-0

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