Scott Winter was prepared for about three months of unemployment when a publishing house laid him off in March.
With his severance pay and unemployment benefits, plus his wife’s salary from a teaching assistant job, the Franklin family of four was making it, at first. Now, he’s beginning to panic.
“What I did defined me…,” said Winter, 38. “Here I am five months later, and I can’t get interviews. The identity crisis is huge for me, because it’s not just the pressure to provide for my family. I think, ‘What were my last 12 years about?’ “
Winter is part of the fastest-growing demographic looking for work during one of the worst economic downturns in the nation’s history. Across the country and in Tennessee, so many men have lost their jobs since the recession began that a Canadian news organization coined the term “mancession” to describe it.
Those who watch social and economic trends say a pattern of job loss among families’ chief breadwinners may prompt major changes — moving more families into poverty, more men into traditionally female-dominated jobs and killing the concept of a “macho man.”
“A loss of income can lead to a loss of the masculine identity as a breadwinner,” said Ron Aday, a professor of sociology at Middle Tennessee State University who specializes in family dynamics. “There is … real potential for emotional turmoil and even household tension for even those men in more egalitarian relationships, where two people are ordinarily pulling the cart.”
Across the country, unemployment has reached its highest level since the Great Depression, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. In June, the male rate was 10 percent and the female rate was 7.6 percent.
In Tennessee, new unemployment insurance claims filed by men between July 1, 2008, and June 30 grew at a rate of almost 50 percent higher than those filed by women.
Scary time for men
But throughout U.S. history, white men have been employed at higher rates than other workers, said Mark Perry, professor of economics at the University of Michigan-Flint.
Source: Tennessean.com
