Gender politics and unemployment

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign recently said that 92.3 percent of the jobs lost under President Obama were held by women. The Romney team, which has struggled to gain political support from women, said the administration "has done a tremendous amount of damage to American women in this economy."

And yet, the relative share of jobs held by men and women has changed only slightly over the past few years. So how can that be?

It's an economic fact of life: In a poor economy, job sectors that employ more men tend to be hit first, and job sectors that employ more women tend to be hit later.

U.S. payroll employment peaked in January 2008 with a year still to go in the administration of President George W. Bush. When the recession kicked in, the job losses were dramatic.

They were especially brutal in construction, because of the housing bust, and in manufacturing, because people stopped buying big-ticket items like cars and refrigerators. Men make up much of the workforce in those industries. In the catastrophic first year of the economic collapse, the last year of the Bush administration, 75.5 percent of the jobs lost were held by men.

Women hold more jobs in industries that shed employment more slowly--notably health care and government, which includes teachers. So more women lost jobs after Obama took office.

At the same time, manufacturing started to lead the economy out of recession. The auto industry started hiring again as public schools were cutting back.

The federal response to the recession did affect the timing of some of these job changes. Federal stimulus spending kept some government workers on the job for an extra year or two before the money ran out.

If you're going to blame Obama for job losses by women, you might as well blame Bush for job losses by men. Either claim, though, is silly.

Bottom line: Women held 48.8 percent of the nation's jobs at the start of 2008 and hold 49.3 percent of the nation's jobs today.

Gender differences in the timing of job losses and gains might make for interesting parlor talk among economists, but that has little place in a discussion about the political response.

Almost 13 million Americans remain unemployed. Some are men. Some are women.

They all want to work, and that's vital to the nation's well-being.