Too many jobs like this.
In a piece of news where the one-sentence version sounds better than the in-depth version,
more women are now employed than were at the beginning of the recession:
A record 67.5 million women are working today, up from the prior peak of 67.4 million in early 2008, according to the Labor Department's latest tally of payrolls that captured the full rebound for the first time. By comparison, 69 million men currently have jobs, below their high of 70.9 million in June 2007.
Why doesn't the in-depth version sound as good? For one thing, since the population is growing, there should have been job growth in the past five years:
If the share [of Americans who are working] had remained constant since the economy tipped into recession in December 2007, women would hold an additional 3.8 million jobs today, according to an estimate by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Men would have 5.5 million more jobs.
For another thing, employment is recovering more quickly for women than for men because women are
more likely to be employed in the industries that have had more job growth. But those include lower-paying industries like hospitality and retail, and:
Within industries however, the story is different: look at the percentage point difference in employment growth between women and men in manufacturing, for example, and you’ll see that female employment has dropped 18.2% since 2007 while male employment has fallen by much less—10.8%. Conversely, in health care and social assistance both men and women saw gains in employment since 2007, but growth in male employment surpassed growth in female employment by 5 percentage points. In 9 of the 16 major industries (and 5 of the 7 largest industries), men have either regained a larger share of their 2007 employment in than women have, or have lost less since the Great Recession began.
So as good as "women have recovered all the jobs lost in the recession" sounds, it's not good news for equality or jobs.