How long before men are the minority?

When it comes to the job market, it’s no longer a man’s world. Male-dominated fields are seeing so many layoffs that women may be posed to become the majority of the workforce. The construction industry lost 126,000 jobs in March. Men held most of those positions. Same goes for manufacturing, which cut 35,000 jobs last month. “If you look at unemployment rates between men and women over the past year, we can see there’s quite a larger impact on men, as far as employment, than women,” said the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance’s Erin Glover. The unemployment rate for men almost doubled in the past year. Many point to downturns in male-dominated fields. Kevin Briggs has experienced the phenomenon. Although working now, he struggled to make it in landscaping. “It’s seasonal in New York and down here I thought it was year-round. But more or less what goes on is when people can’t afford it, they can’t afford it. And if you don’t have the customer base, then what are you going to do?” he said. Some project women will soon outnumber men in the workforce. It hasn’t happened yet, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Women are dominant in two fields not declining: private education and health care. “Women still

comprise about 76 percent of our workforce,” said Chris Roederer, Tampa General Hospital’s senior vice president of human resources. The hospital has close to 6,000 employees, mostly women. And women make up 89 percent of TGH’s registered nurses. “We don’t go out and just seek women,” Roederer continued. “Especially in nursing positions, we seek qualified individuals. It just so happens that a majority are women and continue to be women.” “We’ve got more men in nursing on staff then we’ve ever had, but the women are still the strong force of it,” said Pam Curtis, who has been in nursing 30 years. “Especially in this economic time, the men are losing their jobs and the women are having to step up to the plate a little bit more than they had to.” Roederer thinks the down economy will eventually bring more men into health care. Briggs feels more men do need to think outside the box, when times get tough. “A lot of guys come up short because they can’t think of nothing else to do with themselves,” said Briggs, who made the move to the healthcare field because landscaping wasn’t working out.  

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How long before men are the minority?

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