Why "boys being boys" is so damaging

This recession is pummeling undereducated men more than any other group. The unemployment rate for people without a high school diploma stands at about 12%, the rate for people with a college degree is about 4%. When you seasonally adjust the numbers, the no-high school unemployment rate tops 14%

A hugely-disproportionate number of undereducated people are men.

Here's a great post on Carpe Diem with the data.

Bottom Line: Women (men) are getting an increasing (decreasing) share of college degrees, and the gap between jobless rates for college grads vs. workers without a high school degree has been widening for the last year. Those two trends could help explain why: a) 82% of the job losses over the last year have been jobs held by males, and b) the gap between the male jobless rate (8.3%) and female jobless rate (6.7%) widened to 1.6% in January, the largest male-female jobless rate gap in BLS history (back to 1948).

I would add a note to say that illegal immigrants compete against this same undereducated demographic more than any other. So, not only are the uneducated losing out in a complex world, they are also getting hit by having more competition for jobs and lower wages because illegals act as "scabs" undercutting wages of legal workers.