I came across an article earlier this week in USA Today that really has me thinking. Here is the basis of the data that was being reported:
“Men are claiming more than two-thirds of the private-sector jobs created as the economy recovers, reversing a long-running trend that came within a whisker of giving the USA its first-ever majority-female workforce.
In a wrinkle that puzzles economists, one important driver of the trend is that hundreds of thousands of men are showing up in retailing, once considered a source of jobs for women.
Nearly 1.28 million men gained jobs in the 12 months that ended in November, compared with 600,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Although men have returned to work in greater numbers in goods-producing jobs and service-related businesses, they're not returning to still-stagnant construction industries.
Instead, retailers have added 216,900 men — about five times as many as have been added by traditionally male financial services companies — vs. about 9,000 women. Also, manufacturers have added more than 250,000 men and cut 33,000 women.”
What do you make of this? Honestly, it seems to have a lot of people puzzled. The Bureau of Labor Statics (BLS) has no idea why this is happening (“We haven’t studied why jobs are skewing male”), and the plethora of consultants who weighed in on the topic have not come to consensus on the cause either. The online commentary regarding this article is fairly interesting, if you care to dig into it further.
Maybe someone will figure this out in the weeks ahead. For now, I would like to focus on one issue that was clear in the research: Men are beginning to take jobs in fields that were traditionally dominated by women. While the retail sector was primarily highlighted in this article, this is also happening in “service-related businesses” as well.
For the real estate industry, I believe this trend could have a positive impact. Why? Because many real estate companies continue to be plagued by the “part-time” mentality that limits the people who consider working as a realtor.
Of course, this mentality has its roots in what the real estate pioneers often called “housewife hiring” back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. While that stereotype has faded over the years, it left a legacy that being a real estate agent was often best suited for those (males or females) who were in a relationship where the other partner could provide a steady income and medical benefits.
If the real estate industry is going to leave behind the part-time agent legacy and become a career field that predominantly employs full-time workers, this employment trend may push things along more quickly.
In essence, the more people (male or female) are looking for employment outside the traditional gender-based paradigms, the more people will consider non-traditional employment. This means more eyes on the real estate industry…the largest non-traditional employment sector in the economy.
In the world of recruitment sourcing, we call this “churn.” And employment churn (regardless of the reason it’s happening) is a good thing for a candidate base that has been experiencing some stagnation over the last few years.
Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.
