Thursday, May 06, 2010

Unemployment: hitting men harder than women?

David Wessel writes in today's Wall Street Journal about "The Unemployable Man." He points out that one of every five American men 25 to 54 is not working! Moreover, that trend may continue well into the future. Surveys have found that the "unemployed in the U.S. spend 40 minutes a day looking for work and 3 hours and 20 minutes a day watching t.v." It is not a pretty picture.

Wessel says the situation for women is not as bad. "They were more likely to be in health care and other jobs that were not hit as hard in this recession as jobs that were predominantly filled by men. They are increasingly likely to have the education so often required to get or keep a good job these days."

My stepson is very bright. With what appears to be minimal effort, he can master subjects. The key words there were "minimal effort". My stepdaughter, on the other hand, although also very bright, really puts in the time and effort, and her grades show it. How do we get teenage boys to think "school" learning is cool?

2 comments:

vw bug said...

Please post the answer when you get it. My oldest is very bright and doesn't want to go to school... at the age of 7. I can't imagine what it will be like in the teenage years!

Terri Wagner said...

Maybe we as in the collective we aren't making an effort to make school more interesting for boys. I think it's skewed towards girls. Kinda went too far the other way.