By Scott Burns

Hey guys, I’ve got to confirm some tough news: Women are the new men. While the Atlantic Monthly went a bit overboard last year in an article titled “The End of Men” the economic statistics aren’t encouraging.  Truth is, the gals we like to impress so much with our manly manliness have wiped us out in the Bringing-Home-the-Bacon game.

That’s not hyperbole. In the first decade of this century Labor department figures show that women have gained 2,119,000 jobs. During the same period, men gained a piddling 54,000 jobs. This is the kind of score you’d have if the Yankees played against a Little League team or the Dallas Mavericks played against a very small high school. Basically, we guys never had the ball. Women got 97.5 percent of all the new jobs created between 2000 and 2010.

Of course, it was a lousy decade for jobs. Basically, job creation was about one-tenth of what it was over the previous two decades. In those periods women won a majority of the jobs but at least guys were in the running— we got on the field. We scored something.  In the 90s men won 46 percent of the 18.4 million new jobs created. In the 80s men won 41 percent of the 19.5 million jobs created. To be sure, that’s not a winning score, but it isn’t a total rout, either.

In the 80s and 90s men could avoid embarrassment by pointing to structural differences in the economy— service employment (as in healthcare), a historical feminine strong spot, grew while male dominated sectors (like manufacturing) declined. But today, with push come to shove in every field, we men have just lost it.

Other figures are less dramatic. But they indicate the triumph of Team Estrogen goes well beyond job scores. Here are a few of the indicators I found while researching a new book:

• One group of women out-earns their male competition. Researcher James Chung of Reach Advisors found that unmarried women under age 30 and without children who lived in large cities made more money than their male counterparts. Specifically, he found that this group of women earned more in 147 of 150 major cities, with the premium reaching as high as 17 percent in New York. Small wonder the birth rate is down and fewer young people are marrying.
• Women now outnumber men in gaining college degrees. This isn’t news, of course. Women have outnumbered men on college campuses for more than a decade. Recently, they were getting 57 percent of the undergraduate degrees while men were getting 43 percent. In one state, Maine, men are trailing women 40 percent to 60 percent. Women are gaining in graduate and professional study fields, too.
• Women no longer need men to “marry well.” According to a Pew Research Center study, only 4 percent of working women earned more than their husbands in 1970. In 2007, 22 percent earned more than their husbands. Much of this may be due to the growing education gap cited above. In 1970 52 percent of couples had equal educations and 28 percent of men had more education than their wives. In 2007 some 53 percent of couples had equal educations but 28 percent of women had more education than their husbands.
• Today, men can improve their lot in life by “marrying well.” The Pew Research Center study also noted: “One way in which college-educated married men have gained financially is that they increasingly are likely to be married to the highest income wives.” Now men can go to college in hopes their BA or BS degree will lead to a coveted “MR” degree.
• Male participation in the labor force is declining, female participation is mixed. According to Labor department figures the labor force participation rate (the percentage of men in the job market) fell from 74.8 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2009. The only male group whose participation rate rose was those 65 and older— it went from 67.3 percent to 70.2 percent, a strong indication of a lousy economy.

During the same period, the participation rate for women of all ages barely moved, declining from 59.9 percent to 59.2 percent. The rate for older women, however, confirmed the weak economy— the rate for women 55 to 64 rose from 51.9 percent to 60 percent.