The relatively high pay and high demand for nurses have made it one of a handful of professions attracting more men since the recession shifted the gender-employment picture. And now it looks like male nurses are earning more than their female colleagues.

According to a Census Bureau study published Monday, men account for 9.6% of all nurses in 2011, up from 2.7% in 1970. Male nurses earned, on average, $60,700 a year, while women earned $51,100 per year. (Until recently, the Census Bureau didn’t distinguish among various nursing jobs. Starting in 2010, it split the category of registered nurse into four occupations: registered nurse, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife and nurse practitioner, and therefore is able to better examine men’s representation in the different occupations.)

Traditionally male professions like manufacturing and construction suffered greatly since the downturn. According to a 2012 brief by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, the construction sector

By Mohamed A. El-Erian

Week in and week out, three hypotheses invigorate and sustain the stock market rally. The three are valid. Yet their longer-term implications may be far more complex than most investors fully appreciate.

Equity markets believe in the "Fed put," or the view that the Federal Reserve will increase its monetary policy stimulus in response to any (and all) meaningful decline in risk assets.

This dynamic is reinforced by the revealed preference of the Fed. It is also consistent with the institution’s policy objective – that of enhancing economic growth and job creation by pushing up financial asset prices and thus reviving animal spirits and triggering wealth effects.

Second, market participants also have reason to believe that the steadfast focus of the Fed forces other central banks around the world into more accommodating monetary policy.

The ongoing U-turn by the Bank of Japan, a central bank that long held the view that the collateral damage of prolonged