Shifting middle class job market puts women in the driver’s seat

The shifting job market for the middle class was the focus of a terrific series recently published by the New York Times, an effort that included numerous graphs and charts that showed Middle America — from an economic standpoint — is not only shrinking for many, but the paychecks are also coming from and to new types of industries and workers.

The types of jobs that pay middle-class wages — between $40,000 and $80,000 in 2014 dollars — have shifted since 1980. Fewer of these positions are in male-dominated production occupations, while a greater share are in workplaces more open to women, the Times reported.
At the same time, manufacturing jobs that have long been dominated by men — and did not require a college degree — have declined precipitously.

Here are some of the highlights from the Times that indicate the economic tide is turning in favor of women seeking good-paying middle class professions:
* Registered nurses and other speciality occupations accounted for the largest share of growth in the middle-class wage range. In 1980, 19 of every 1,000 middle-class jobs were held by registered nurses. Today, the rate is 39 per 1,000.

“The occupational structure has not somehow become more women-friendly,” David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. who has studied the changing American job market, told the Times. In fact, he added, “the hollowing out of middle-skill jobs was larger for women than for men.”The process intensified sharply during the financial crisis and the ensuing economic downturn.

Beyond nursing and other health care-related fields, female-friendly professions that are on the rise include legal assistants, accountants and financial managers, HR specialists and insurance adjusters.
These two charts that shows the fastest growing and shrinking middle class occupations. Those occupations on the downside are all dominated by male workers.