Michelle Cheng* says that unlike the great recession, COVID-19 has been harder on jobs held by women.
In terms of US job losses, the 2008 recession had a far greater impact on men than women.
Between 2007 and 2009, male employment fell by 7.5 per cent, while female employment fell 3.1 per cent.
The reason: Job losses were heavily concentrated in construction and manufacturing, where women only make up just 10 per cent and 29 per cent of the workforce, respectively.
The trend has been fairly similar in other recessions.
But Covid-19 has turned things upside.
This time around, the job losses so far have been concentrated in industries where women hold a majority.
The April jobs report from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics shows that 2.5 million jobs were lost in the health and education sector, where women account for 74.8 per cent of employment.
Meanwhile, the retail trade sector—also heavily dominated by women, who represent 73.2 per cent of all employees in clothing stores, for example—lost 2.1 million jobs.
And in the leisure and hospitality sector, which has been the hardest hit, with jobs plummeting by 7.7 million, women account for 51.2 per cent of workers.
The overall unemployment rate jumped from 4.4 per cent in March to 14.7 per cent in April.
Of the 20.5 million US jobs lost in April, women lost 11.3 million jobs, and men lost 9.2 million, according to the BLS.
Another difference between this crisis and previous ones is that schools and daycares are closed, which wasn’t a factor in 2008.
As a result, the US labour force participation rate among women fell by 4.5 per cent, whereas for men the rate fell 3.5 per cent.
“That’s certainly due to the fact that women have to drop out of the labour force to look after children,” says Julia Pollak, an economist at ZipRecruiter.
“Many men had to do so, too, but women disproportionately shoulder that burden.”
It’s not clear how the economic damage will play out.
Some reports show that men never fully recovered after the Great Recession.
Many of them entered the ranks of the long-term unemployed and would be linked to disproportionally high rates of suicide and opioid addiction.
And many applied for disability insurance, leaving the labour market permanently for that reason, according to Pollak.
Though women may make up a larger percentage of the newly unemployed, in raw numbers, the job losses among men will be larger than in the last recession.
Given the widespread impact on the labour market, Pollak says, “to the extent we saw terrible and social impact last time, we could very well see those again.”
Attachment theory
The latest figures on labour-market participation—measuring the share of the population that is employed or actively looking for work—underscore that female attachment to the labour market is typically weaker, says Pollak. Historically, when a woman’s earnings would go up, her husband usually would not scale back his participation in the workforce, but the reverse has not been true.
Given that caregiving and household roles are more culturally ingrained for women, “losing their jobs may not be as damaging to their identity and their ability to function in society,” says Pollak.
When the labour market starts strengthening, women’s participation may suffer further if childcare options aren’t readily available, says Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed.
But women are also more likely to work in part-time jobs, the availability of which tends to increase during recessions, he adds.
A survey by ZipRecruiter found that men are spending more time than women looking for new jobs.
Among job seekers who were employed in February but have since lost their jobs or had their pay or hours cut, 67 per cent of men and 62 per cent of women said they were searching job sites daily.
*Michelle Cheng is a reporter for Quartz at Work and can be contacted at michellebcheng.com.
This Article first appeared at qz.com.
