About 347,000 men left the workforce in November, compared to about 10,000 women. That’s in stark contrast to September, when 865,000 women left the labor force — four times the number of men that month.
The drop-off is somewhat striking because aside from March and April of this year, when the majority of the pandemic-related job losses took place, men hadn’t lost so many jobs so quickly since 2013.
What this means and how this will bear out remains to be seen, cautioned William Rodgers, a professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
“The narrative still is that women of all backgrounds and also minority men, they’ve borne the brunt of the downturn and their recovery… hasn’t been strong,” said Rodgers, who also previously served as chief economist in the Department of Labor.