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PolitiFact, however, argued that this was a hugely misleading read of job numbers. It blamed Obama’s policies for job losses that started before Obama even took office. And it completely ignores the massive job losses that men suffered in the recession before Obama took office.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research
It also ignores the jobs that both genders gained in Obama’s second term, of course.
Economists told PolitiFact that this is a typical pattern for recessions: Men often lose their jobs first and hardest, because they’re in more vulnerable industries like manufacturing and construction.
If you look at the numbers from the beginning of the recession in 2007 through March 2012 (when Romney’s original analysis cut off), women only lost 39.7 percent of the jobs.