[Unemployment] How COVID-19 is deepening the economic divide
….across gender, race, age, marital & immigration status
Last updated: May 22, 2020
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 39 million workers have lost their jobs since mid-March, bringing the official unemployment rate to 14.7% (the worst since the Great Depression) leaving 1 in 7 people in the United States unemployed last month. Some claim that the true unemployment rate may be even higher than 20%.
Before the pandemic, women’s unemployment rate was actually lower than that of men’s but in Apr’20, women accounted for 55% of all jobs lost.¹
In the last 10 years industries like leisure, travel, tourism & hospitality had seen a boom and women made up the majority of the workforce. That made the overall employment #s for women heavily skewed and dependent on select industries which we can now tell with certainty are not pandemic proof.
~60% of all jobs lost by women came from two industries: Leisure & Hospitality + Ed & Health services.²
But even when these select sectors of the economy were booming employment in the US was not equal across gender, martial and racial profiles. In Apr ’19 when women’s unemployment % was 3.1% vs 3.4% for men, unemployment % was about 2x higher for African American women. A similar trend was seen in the unemployment #s for Latinas, foreign born women & single mothers.
The pandemic has laid bare ravaging consequences of the bias towards employing women in industries where jobs mimicked traditional household work along with the longstanding racial and gender inequities that went unaddressed for decades, making the economic crisis even worse for women.
Here’s why the overall 14.7% unemployment is not representative of how dire the crisis is for select groups particularly women.
1. Women
- Unemployment rate at 15.5%: Until 2020, women had never seen unemployment % in the double digits!¹ Today it is 15.5% for women vs 13% for men
- Women lost 2.1M more jobs than men: Women made up 49% of the workforce but accounted for 55% of all jobs lost. In April’ 20, 11.3 million women lost their jobs vs 9.2 million jobs lost by men
- That’s 5X more than the decline during the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Between Jul 2010 and Feb 2020, 11.1 million women were added to the workforce. Unfortunately 100% of those gains were wiped out in April 2020 because of the pandemic
“What took ten years to create, took only one month to undo”
2. African American & Latino Women
COVID-19 has wrecked havoc in all our communities but not equally. For cities & states that have reported racial data, it’s clear that the health crisis has disproportionately hit people of color, particularly African American.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, a third of COVID-19 infections in the US have affected African Americans, even though African Americans represent only 13 % of the U.S. population.
“It’s America’s unfinished business — we’re free, but not equal,” civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson told the AP “There’s a reality check that has been brought by the coronavirus, that exposes the weakness and the opportunity.”
- The data is incomplete but troubling especially to see how the economic impact makes it worse for these communities.
- 200% increase: The rate of unemployment was already higher than average for African American workers and has gotten worse due to the pandemic. In Apr ’20 unemployment for Black women increased to 16.4%; that’s a 200% increase since Feb ‘20
- Latina: By far, hispanic women have the highest rate of unemployment (20.2%), an increase of more than 300% since Feb ‘20; Hispanic men’s rate of unemployment is second highest, at 16.7%, and increase of over 400% since February.
3. Single Mothers
Last year the New York Times reported that there had been a surge in single mothers entering the workforce, thanks to two things i) a booming economy and ii) lack of a federal level safety net which left single mothers with no option but to work. While it may have worked out in the short term when cities & states enforced laws that favored working families (eg: increasing minimum wages), what happens when a pandemic hits?
Short answer: All the gains get wiped out!
- by numbers: 1.5 Million single mothers are now unemployed that’s more than a million out of workforce solely because of the pandemic. The rate of unemployment of single mothers is 3X that of February’s (up from 4.1% to 15.9%)
- by gender: According to PEW research, 3 in 10 solo mothers were already living in poverty before the pandemic. Among solo parents, mothers are almost twice as likely as fathers to be living below the poverty line (30% vs. 17%)
- by race: Over 55.5% of all Black families with children and 36.9 % of Native American families with children are headed by a single mother thereby making the repercussions of an economy fraught with unemployment worse for these select groups of our society.
4. Foreign born women
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines foreign born as those residing in the United States who are not U.S. citizens at birth. There are over 4 million foreign born individuals “immigrants” who lost their jobs in Apr ’20 because of the pandemic, bringing the unemployment rate for this group to 16.5% vs 14% for native born workers
- Of these~2 million foreign born women lost their jobs accounting for 20% of all jobs lost for women
- The unemployment rate is again disproportionately higher for women of this group — 18.1% for foreign born women vs 15.3% for foreign born men vs 12.8% for native born men
Note: As the chart below suggests, men & women with disabilities have also been severely impacted with an upward of 19% unemployment rate in Apr’20.
5. Gen Z
In the United States, young adults of age 20–24 have been the hardest hit by far. Most of them with student debt, millions of recent grads are disproportionately impacted by the job market devastated by the pandemic.
Again, unemployment rate for women of age 20–24 is higher than any other group at 28% which is almost 2x the average unemployment rate across all groups.
“A large body of research — along with the experience of those who came of age in the last recession — shows that young people trying to start their careers during an economic crisis are at a lasting disadvantage. Their wages, opportunities and confidence in the workplace may never fully recover” — NYT
So, what can you and I do?
Something about these numbers feels personal. Maybe it’s because I am a woman or maybe it’s the fact that I identify with more than one of the disproportionately impacted groups described above and I can’t not do something to fix this.
“When we suffer, we suffer as equals!”
It’s more urgent than ever for us to individually and collectively work on consciously closing this gap, else we risk worsening this divide for generations. Instead of merely accepting our post COVID reality as the new normal, the way it’s presented to us because we are the ‘fortunate’ few, let’s go out of our way to find and support people of the impacted groups and take them with us in our journey forward. In the short term -
- as an employer/ founder: we need to collectively work on diversifying presence & jobs held by women (particularly of the groups described above) in industries beyond leisure & hospitality, ed & health services & retail trade (collectively responsible for 70% of all job cuts for women)
- as an employee / individual: don’t let COVID make room for diversity & inclusion efforts to take a back seat. Continue promoting the narrative at work and in your social & professional groups. Today, the representation of women of all groups is more important than ever!
Of course there are tons of action items — from fixing immigration laws to creating new ones that support single mothers and incentivizes industries to ensure representation from disproportionately affected groups.
We can do a round II for ideas & suggestions but on a personal note, as a first step, I recently signed up on FLIK and have made it a personal OKR to mentor 5 women of age 20–24 & help them with potential career opportunities.
FLIK a mission driving company that’s advancing women’s economic participation and accelerating of women-led ventures on a global scale. We need more creative platforms, businesses and avenues like these to help close the growing divide.
Let’s do more!
¹https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
²Fig 1: https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/QF-Breadwinner-Mothers-by-Race-FINAL.pdf
