In This Job Market, Women Have the Upper Hand

America is fast becoming a country with two economies: a stagnant one for men and a growing one for women. So far this year, the US has created more than 165,000 private-sector jobs, and 72% of them went to women. To some extent this reflects a structural change in the economy, as growth is in industries more likely to employ women, such as healthcare. But it is also the result of a series of policy choices that aim to make the economy safer — and have made it less favorable to men.

The decline in male work is a long-running trend that coincided with the technology-driven decline in manufacturing and the rise of the service economy. America also has an aging population, which means there are a lot of jobs in healthcare, whose workforce is about 80% female. The nature of technology is such that the labor market is kinder to people with more education, and women are more likely than men to have a college degree.