Since the beginning of the Great Recession in December of 2007 both women and men in Pennsylvania have experienced dramatic job losses and steep increases in unemployment. Almost three years after the official end of the recession, neither women’s nor men’s employment has reached pre-recession levels, but men’s employment gain has been considerably stronger than women’s. The gap between the number of women and men employed in Pennsylvania was wider at the end of 2011 than it was at the outset of the Great Recession. Women have not gained
in the recovery relative to men.