KARL D. writes:

There is a staggering absence of men in certain parts of the American workforce. This is something I have noticed and it is blowing my mind. Where men were once dominant, they are now all but missing. I went to my dentist the other day for an annual checkup. My dentist is a woman. Her entire staff of around twenty people from the receptionist on down to dental assistants and dental hygienists are all female.

My local bank is dominated by females. I have also been looking for a new place to live and virtually all of the real estate agents are women, as is building management.

My cousin runs a law firm. Once again, with the exception of people who have to do grunt work, her entire staff of over one hundred people is 98 percent female.

My local post office? Entirely female.I see this time and time again. Especially in the medical and clerical government positions. Am I the only one picking up on this? All I could keep thinking about was where all of these now displaced men are working? Are they even working? No wonder the divorce rate is through the roof. How can you have a family when men can’t even find decent to modest paying jobs to support said families with? What must it be like for the lone male employee being surrounded in a sea of estrogen everyday? What does that do to his personality and entire natural state of being male? I suppose in feminists eyes this is either retribution for years of patriarchal oppression and entirely fair.

Laura writes:

What you have noticed is confirmed by official statistics. According to the Washington Post, “Between 1960 and 2009,  the share of men working fulltime fell from 83 percent to 66 percent, and the share not making formal wages tripled from 6 percent to 18 percent. When you take all men, not just those working fulltime, into account, the slight decline [in accompanying graph] becomes a plummet of 28 percent in median real wages from 1969 to 2009.”

This does not, of course, take into account the most recent recession.

In 2012, Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney wrote in The New York Times:

Because the role of women in the labor force has changed strikingly over the last 40 years, the problem is most evident in trends in male earnings. And, in fact, there has been a lot of talk about the stagnating wages of American male workers. Using conventional methods of analysis, the data show that the median earnings for prime-age (25-64) working men have declined slightly from 1970 to 2010, falling by 4 percent after adjusting for inflation.

This finding of stagnant wages is unsettling, but also quite misleading. For one thing, this statistic includes only men who have jobs. In 1970, 94 percent of prime-age men worked, but by 2010, that number was only 81 percent. The decline in employment has been accompanied by increases in incarceration rates, higher rates of enrollment in the Social Security Disability Insurance program and more Americans struggling to find work. Because those without jobs are excluded from conventional analyses of Americans’ earnings, the statistics we most commonly see — those that illustrate a trend of wage stagnation — present an overly optimistic picture of the middle class.

When we consider all working-age men, including those who are not working, the real earnings of the median male have actually declined by 19 percent since 1970. This means that the median man in 2010 earned as much as the median man did in 1964 — nearly a half century ago. Men with less education face an even bleaker picture; earnings for the median man with a high school diploma and no further schooling fell by 41 percent from 1970 to 2010.

[See accompanying graph.]

Women have fared much better over these 40 years, but they started from a lower level, and the same problems faced by their male counterparts are beginning to have an effect. Since 1970, the earnings of the median female worker have increased by 71 percent, and the share of women 25 to 64 who are employed has risen to 71 percent, from 54 percent. But after making significant wage gains over several decades, that progress has slowed and even reversed recently. Since 2000, the earnings of the median woman have fallen by 6 percent.

Though these trends in earnings for American workers — men and women alike — are troubling and have many causes, the data do present some clear guidance for policy makers. Among the most robust findings in economics is that education reduces unemployment and increases earnings. But even with the remarkable capacity for education to produce growth, the rate of educational attainment in the United States has slowed, especially for men. The share of men 25 to 34 with a college degree, for example, has barely increased over the last 30 years. (The trends are much better for women.)

James P. writes:

I have been using the same dentist for some years now, and noted to myself the “oddity” that the two dentists and all their receptionists and hygienists are female. The same goes for the pediatric dentist my children use — an entirely female office. Is there something about dentistry that doesn’t attract men these days?

Our local post offices employ men, mostly black or Asian.

Dan R. writes:

Karl, you are not “the only one picking this up.”  For awhile now I too have been somewhat astonished at the change in personnel you note at the post office, banks, and real estate offices.  Retail stores in general, with an exception of auto parts stores, also reflect this change.  Men are still more numerous in the professions, but as you note, the staffs are usually all female.  I live in a factory town, and my guess is that the workers inside the factory are more often men.  The schools have long been female-dominated.  Our local conservative college, however, seems to consist more of men than women.  I’m not sure what the lesson is here, but I’d guess it has to do with a realignment of the working force that’s gradually been occurring since women entered en masse.  I share your sentiments.  Obviously most of this would not be happening without the two-income family.  It’s a very different world from the one in which we grew up, and I for one don’t see the great benefit to it.  It looks like it’s going to be a long road ahead of us

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