“Welcome to the he-cession,” wrote the Globe and Mail recently, citing employment statistics indicating that — at least for now — the growing recession in Canada is affecting men more than women.

Although the overall Canadian unemployment rate increased in March to 8% (the highest rate in seven years), the job sectors in Canada that have been hardest hit are construction, manufacturing and natural resources — jobs with a higher percentage of male employees. More women are employed in services jobs, such as education and health care, that are less vulnerable to the business cycle.

More than 27,000 Canadian men lost jobs in March alone, while the unemployment rate for women remained largely unchanged. And as the article concluded,

That’s meant a domestic rearrangement for many Canadian households, as newly stuck-at-home husbands kiss their working wives goodbye each morning.

A report issued a year ago by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — chaired by Senator Edward M. Kennedy — concluded that in the U.S., the situation was reversed. “Early signs,” according to this report, indicated that “this recession is hitting women harder than men. They have suffered more job losses and a larger reduction in wages in recent months than the general population.”

More recently, though, the New York Times reported a somewhat different recession effect:

Women are poised to surpass men on the nation’s payrolls, taking the majority for the first time in American history.

The reason has less to do with gender equality than with where the ax is falling.

The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction.

Perhaps now, it’s a “he-cession” on both sides of the border.

Photo by rocknroll_guitar (flickr)