On Wall St., Vaccine Hopes Compete With Rising Cases: Live Updates

November 18, 2020
Business

“Work is so much more than what you’re taking home as payment,” Laci Oyler said. But when cutting her hours wasn’t enough to deal with child care, she quit her job. — Credit…Sara Stathas for The New York Times

First, the parts of the economy that were smacked hardest and earliest by job losses were ones where women dominate — restaurants, retail businesses and health care.

Then, a second wave began taking out local and state government jobs, another area where women outnumber men.

The third blow has, for many, been the knockout: the closing of child care centers and the shift to remote schooling. That has saddled working mothers, much more than fathers, with overwhelming household responsibilities.

It is a rare and ruinous one-two-three punch that’s not just pushing women out of jobs they held, but also preventing many from seeking new ones, The New York Times’s Patricia Cohen reports. For an individual, it could limit prospects and earnings over a lifetime. Across a nation, it could stunt growth, robbing the economy of educated, experienced and dedicated workers.

The latest jobs report from the Labor Department showed that there were 4.5 million fewer women employed in October than there were a year ago, compared with 4.1 million men.
According to the Census Bureau, a third of the working women 25 to 44 years old who are unemployed said the reason was child care demands. Only 12 percent of unemployed men cited those demands.
The burdens of the pandemic-induced recession have fallen most heavily on low-income and minority women and single mothers. The jobless rate is 9.2 percent for Black women and 9 percent for Hispanic women, compared with 6.5 percent for women over all.
Changes forced on women by the pandemic elicit a mixture of anxiety and hope. Many women worry that the changes will sharply narrow women’s choices and push them unwillingly into the unpaid role of full-time homemaker.

Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, underscored the impact during a webcast event on Tuesday. Citing the departure of women from the work force in “big numbers now as children stay home,” he added, “You could see women who not by preference, but by requirement, are at home, and their careers may be hurt.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/18/business/us-economy-coronavirus