Here's how this recession is hitting women the hardest

The coronavirus recession is devastating America’s labor market – and by almost every measure, it’s worse for women than any previous economic slump. Women make up the majority of employees in the hospitality and leisure sector, which shrank by half in just a few weeks as the country went into lockdown. Meanwhile, nurses, who are more often female, are at the front lines in the fight against Covid-19. Past recessions hit male-dominated industries harder. The recession following the 2008 financial crisis was nicknamed a “mancession” because so many men were laid off from construction and manufacturing jobs. This time is different. Friday’s jobs report showed the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. The US economy shed an unprecedented 20.5 million jobs in April alone, pushing the unemployment rate to 14.7% – the highest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began to track monthly data in 1948. But it was worse for women: The unemployment rate for women climbed to 15.5%, while the rate for men increased to 13%, according to the BLS. Women of color were especially hard hit by the job losses, with the April unemployment rates reaching 16.4% for black women and 20.2% for Hispanic women. Overall, while women still represented 50% of US payrolls in February, they accounted for 59% of job losses in March, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That’s largely because women are overrepresented in jobs that can’t be done remotely, like hospitality and retail, said Kate Bahn, economist and director of labor market policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. So even though many economists expect a lot of the lost jobs to reappear when the economy reopens, women are bearing the brunt of the pain now. A hit to equality Women were already at a disadvantage before the pandemic hit, for several reasons. They disproportionately hold lower-paying jobs in those hospitality and retail sectors. US women were also more likely to work part time or hold multiple positions at once. Plus women save less money than men, including for their retirement. This is partly because women earn less to begin with, but they also might work fewer years and prioritize other financial decisions such as repaying debt over saving. The federal expansion of unemployment benefits may have softened the blow for now, but Bahn says these short-term drops in income will stifle long-term earnings growth. “This is what happened to millennials in the Great Recession,” Bahn added. “In the coronavirus crisis, it will affect low-wage workers, women workers and workers of color.” While overall employment picture is likely to improve as economies reopen, economists say the hospitality sector may take much longer to recover as consumers remain wary of public health risks from restaurants and movie theaters. A further major complication: Women in the United States also still carry a disproportionate responsibility for child care, which could make their return to the workforce difficult or impossible as schools stay closed and summer activities are canceled. Overall, the mass layoffs could lead to deteriorating conditions for the US labor market as a whole, said Bahn. People who are worried about their extended benefits running out might be more willing to accept any job, which could decrease worker bargaining power and depress wages – and that could be especially bad for women. “We’ve already had decades of increasing income inequality,” Bahn said. “This will make it worse.”

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The coronavirus recession is hitting women the hardest