This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Darian Woods. I'm Wailin Wong. And it is Jobs Friday.

It is that time of the month when we don our grease-spattered coveralls, and we inspect the big engine of the economy - workers.

Yes. And the jobs numbers out today were a bit of a disappointment. Jobs growth in the U.S. slowed to 114,000 new jobs in July, and the unemployment rate slid up to 4.3%.

The economy is downshifting its gears. And we can see the share of men with jobs fell slightly, which continues this long-run trend that's mostly been declining since the 1950s.

That's caused by a number of factors. One is that the U.S. economy has shifted away from providing jobs that have historically had more men, like manufacturing.

And the economy has moved more towards fast-growing jobs that have historically had more women, things like social work and nursing.

Jobs in these sectors grew in July, and this shift has been painful for many men around the country.

But it's not like these industries don't want men. To the contrary. Take social work. Social work organizations are crying out for more men, and a lot of men want jobs. So why aren't they meeting?

Today on the show, getting more men into so-called pink-collar jobs. We learn about a surprising way to encourage men into industries traditionally dominated by women.

Anthony Estreet got into social work through one of his fraternity brothers.

Having a conversation with another male social worker helped me to understand, like, just the broadness of the field and the spaces that we can go into.

Anthony realized he could be a mentor or a counselor, or he could work behind the scenes building programs and policies. Anthony's own start in the field was very hands-on and heavy.

My very first job was in an adolescent drug treatment center. That was also the first time that I met a 13-year-old male who was using intravenous heroin.

One of the reasons why that young man was engaged in IV heroin use was because of sexual trauma, right?

And it's a - it's sometimes difficult to disclose those types of traumas to maybe a woman social worker or somebody else that you're not connected to.

Years later, though, and the situation is very different. The young man is now an adult and doing well and thriving. And, you know, sometimes, it could be, you know, the great social work skills that were utilized, but it could also be the connection, right?

Anthony now heads the National Association of Social Workers. He says his organization is trying to attract more men into the profession with a few different initiatives.

Fellowships and grants to men that want to enter the field, really looking at ways to lower tuition, to make it much more accessible. But then also connecting them to other men in social work.

Currently, the number of men working in social work isn't high.

It's about 20%, and it's one of those areas - you know, it's kind of like nursing, where people hear about it - are like, oh, that's a woman's profession. And so they tend to not go in it.

This struggle to attract men was something that intrigued Alexia Delfino. She's an assistant professor of economics at Bocconi University. She decided to set up an experiment in the U.K.

Together with employer, we designed and tested new recruitment messages targeted to potential applicants for the job that was offered by their organization.

The organization had a pool of people who indicated vague interest in a social work job. They weren't social work students.

They were just people who had entered their email addresses on a website but hadn't formally applied. Training would be provided on the job.

And the question was, what would convince more men to take the next step to actually make a formal job application?

We decided to randomize the message that they got in their mail inbox. So in their email, they had a message encouraging them to apply for the job, and this message had different contents depending on what we wanted to test.

One group received an email with a photograph of a female social worker. The other group received a photograph of a male worker.

And our hypothesis was that seeing a male worker should encourage more men to apply because it weakens the association of the job with women.

Alexia also tweaked the email's text. She was interested in this idea that men might think that social work wouldn't recognize their skills or their efforts.

So some emails talked about how much of the past years participants had received great feedback from their work.

One set said that 9 out of 10 got great feedback, and another said that only 7 out of 10 did.

So you've got one group of emails showing many high-performance reviews and another less so.

Now, both statements were correct, but they were referring to different years in the past.

So this was truthful information, but it was selected. So selectively truthful. Yes, exactly.

And the result, who actually followed through and applied for the social work job, surprised Alexia.

Contrary to my expectations, our main photograph had no impact on men's applications. And so in my setting, a photograph is not worth a thousand words.

I'm just thinking of all those brochures they send out for colleges and whatever else that... Yes. Show, like, a diverse group of people. It's like, maybe it doesn't matter at all.

It doesn't seem to be for men going into these industries, no. But there was part of the experiment that did work. And that was with the text.

Fourteen percent more men applied when they were told that there were fewer people receiving high-performance evaluations.

Telling men that the job is more challenging, and there are higher rewards to talent encourages more applications. That's so interesting. Yes.

Telling them that the job is harder is going to result in more men applying.

Yes, exactly. That's the idea. And this goes against men's priors that are uncertain but also pessimistic about the potential rewards that their talent can get on the job.

You know, Darian, you tell me a job is hard, I'm going to run away from it - look for an easier job to apply for.

Yeah, mileage may vary on different people. But, you know, if you think about college acceptance rates, like, they're proud of how few people get accepted. And some people actually seek that out.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's what is coming up in Alexia's research, right? Because she spoke to some men about social work. They had been a little wary about social work.

They thought it might not recognize their skills or their hard work. But then, you know, showing that this is not a profession where everyone gets an A - it's actually really hard - was actually a good thing for these guys.

These messages seem to be effective strategies to enhance the diversity in female-dominated jobs.

The stakes are high. Here in the U.S., the surgeon general says mental health is the defining public health crisis of our time. More and more men are seeking out help.

Another social worker I spoke to, Marcus Burrow (ph), said talking to someone who shares the same shared background can be helpful, not just gender but also race and ethnicity.

I do get a lot of calls from a lot of Black men. And from my experience, it's been very helpful for them, even explicitly letting me know that I'm glad that you were on the other line, that you took the call and was able to sort of help me navigate this.

And Marcus says needing more male social workers isn't at the expense of women, who, in a lot of ways, built the profession.

Still, big up to the women, you know? They do great work as well, and we need them. But we absolutely do need more men.

Yeah. And hopefully, this could be a virtuous circle. I don't know. Just tell them it's really hard. Yeah. If there's one thing I've learned from this episode.

Exactly. Don't worry about the stock photos of diverse crowds. What's important is to drill down 'cause you're going to suffer.

Or at least it's going to be harder than you think. Now, we did another episode on the huge demand for social workers last year. We'll have a link to that in our show notes.