Outside Hackney Jobcentre the drizzle lands on the pavement. Inside, two dozen men stab at computer screens, looking for the day’s offers.
There is nothing extraordinary here, in the depths of a recession – except the lack of women. “There’s nothing there to find,” said Muhammed Maih, 26, who has been in and out of catering and retail work since the start of the recession. “More women get admin work. I want something too. When it gets worse and worse, I’ll take whatever’s there.”
Mr Maih is only one of more than 1.5 million men out of work. The latest figures reveal that men are losing jobs at twice the rate of women, producing a crisis of a magnitude seen only once since the end of the Second World War. In the US it has already been given a name: now, the “mancession” is spreading to Britain.
The effects are becoming apparent as overall employment figures take a positive turn for the first time since the recession began.
Ian Ellard, 23, from Bexleyheath, southeast London, is a Cambridge classics graduate with six languages under his belt. He spent 2½ years in part-time jobs between periods of unemployment before finding a permanent position three weeks ago.
Before 2008, 40 per cent of women worked part-time compared with 11 per cent of men. But last year, for the first time, more men took on part-time jobs as the rate fell off for women.
“I did feel like a novelty,” Mr Ellard said. “I remember in my interview my prospective boss looking at me quizzically and saying: ‘But why do you want to work here – you’re a young man!’ I had taken this to mean that, as a young person looking for work, I should be at bars or pubs. But it became apparent as soon as I stepped on to the shop floor that the emphasis had not been on ‘young’, but on ‘man’.”
The Times