Since the recession ended 80% of new jobs have gone to men http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/15 ... s-20120715

Does this reflect discrimination or is something else going on here?

It's the War on Women.

What were the trends in job losses before that time, freeman? Was this a case of men getting jobs after having been laid off from others?

I was going to ask the same question. It wouldn't be unreasonable to speculate that men suffered more redundancies in the preceding years, especially since the construction industry was so badly hit, which is pretty much entirely male.

This was being discussed on a local talk radio show the other day. It was mentioned that men lost jobs in higher proportions at the beginning of the economic collapse back in 2008/9.

So have we answered freeman's question, then?

This part of the article indicates that something more is going than just men essentially recovering jobs that they had lost during the recesssion:

"Three years ago, women made up a majority of the payrolls in the retail trade, just as they have throughout most of the last three decades for which data are available. But since the sector hit bottom in December 2009, men have landed more than 440,000 retail jobs while women have lost 49,500 positions.

Men now account for 51% of the 14.75 million retail jobs in the country.

Similarly, the male share of payrolls has inched higher in financial services such as banking and real estate, healthcare and education, and leisure and hospitality businesses, although women still outnumber men in each sector."

It seems to be answered by the same response. Men lost the jobs first then women lost the jobs next. Men are recovering the jobs first. Let's look at the ratio in a couple of years.

Indeed, these things work in much longer trends than a couple of years, while a large recession and a variable recovery will have a more short term effect on particular stats.

It would also be interesting to compare part time and full time working, Absolute numbers of employees isn't the whole story (especially in retail).