According to an Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the February employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of January men hold more jobs (71,434,000) than when the recession began (70,769,000 in December 2007) seven years earlier. Due to women’s relatively stronger job growth in several of the last few years, their total number of jobs lost in the recession has been recovered for some time (69,415,000 jobs in January 2015 vs 67,581,000 jobs in December 2007 when the recession began). The overall unemployment rate increased slightly to 5.7 percent in January from 5.6 percent in December (an amount that is not statistically significant).