Why are women losing retail jobs while men are gaining them?
ANALYSIS | There are a few theories
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Danielle Paquette.
A new analysis of government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals a surprising disparity: The retail industry, which shed the most jobs last year (54,300), seemed to push women out while offering more opportunities to men.
Between October 2016 and October 2017, women who worked in the country’s stores lost 160,300 jobs, while 106,000 men found new work in the field, the analysis from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found.
Over the past year, the Washington think tank says, “women’s share of all retail trade jobs fell from 50.4 to 49.6 percent.”
Economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the IWPR, said it’s too soon to tell what sparked this shift.
Her theory: As hiring ramped up, so did spending on big-ticket items, including furniture and appliances — and men tend to dominate those sales roles, which have historically come with higher commission payments. They also offer more job security.
Hartmann also theorized that women in retail could be leaving the industry for better-paying jobs in health care, one of the fastest-growing fields. Demand has soared for hospital workers and physician assistants, for example, and economists say more employers are willing to provide on-the-job training.
A whopping 73 percent of cashiers, meanwhile, are women, and those jobs have been identified as among the first to fade away with the rise of automation.
Retail trade is one of the nation’s largest industries, employing about 15.8 million workers in roles that connect people to products. The jobless rate for the sector is significantly higher than the national average (4.6 percent, compared to 4.1 percent), but the future of the field isn’t as gloomy as economists predict, some union leaders say.
Chelsea Connor, director of communications at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store International Union, which represents about 100,000 workers in the United States, said the rise of online shopping hasn’t destroyed careers at brick-and-mortar stores.
“A lot of people are saying retail is dying, but it’s just changing,” she said. “Consumers want to be able to touch and feel products before they buy them.”
Connor said she hasn’t seen any gender gaps in layoffs among her members, who work at Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Zara and other stores. On average, sales representatives of both genders make an average of $15 to $30 per hour, depending on their experience level and skill on the sales floor.
Men, however, tend to work more often in packing and shipping roles, she said. In a world where people shop online as often as they take out the trash, that could account for the uneven employment bump.
“It’s possible the BLS numbers reflect that” — men in different types of packing and delivery roles, Connor said. “But for us, it’s never been about men vs. women in hiring.”
Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US LLP, an international consulting firm, agreed the government numbers don’t necessarily mean female workers’ fortunes are worsening. Women now outpace men in college enrollment, he said, so they might be leaving some retail jobs to pursue more lucrative options.
“They’re going to be cycling into higher paying jobs,” he said. “They’re going to be going into management.”
