Welcome to Is This Working?, a column about the future of work through the lens of gender. That’s a question many workers, particularly women, are asking two years into a pandemic that has strained many systems to their breaking point, laid bare longstanding inequities, and prompted people to reevaluate what they want and need from work.
Take February’s jobs report: While the overall U.S. unemployment rate fell from 4% in January to 3.8% in February, and the economy added 678,000 jobs, unemployment for Black women ticked up from 5.8% to 6.1%, the highest rate for women of any race or ethnicity. Some 31,000 Black women exited the labor force.
The duration of unemployment for some groups is also a concern, Zickuhr says, pointing out that the average length of unemployment is 26.9 weeks for Black women and 30.7 weeks for Asian American women, compared to 24.1 weeks for white women. “That’s just among workers still in the labor force, and doesn’t capture those who have left,” she added.
“The struggle is real with us out here,” Duncan told MarketWatch. “I’m not the only individual; I’m not the only mother. … Other parents are struggling just like I am in the African-American community.” “‘When they’re thinking about reentering the workforce, parents have to know and believe that they have reliable child care so they can sustain employment.’”
Women, particularly women of color, are also more likely to work in care sectors that were harder hit by the pandemic and have not recovered. These jobs are often undervalued and provide low pay, due to what MarketWatch’s Jillian Berman describes as the industry’s “quirky economics,” as well as historical racial and gender discrimination. In fact, many of these workers can’t afford child care for their own kids.
“Creating a more resilient economy and a true recovery for Black women — and for all workers — means making long-overdue investments in workers, families and communities.” Pre-pandemic baseline is ‘not necessarily the goal’ Relative to pre-pandemic levels, Black women’s employment continues to be the weakest compared with that of Latina and white women, and women’s employment overall hasn’t recovered as much as men’s, Zickuhr said. But the way things were right before COVID-19 wasn’t ideal either, she added, given the many workers experiencing wage gaps, occupational segregation and poor job quality.
Democrats are working with the White House to rebrand parts of President Biden’s doomed “Build Back Better” social-spending and climate agenda as a strategy to lower rising costs and win over West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the key Democrat holdout on the bill. Earlier versions of Build Back Better had included paid family leave, universal pre-K, large investments in child care, and an extension of the expanded child tax credit.