A million more women have lost jobs than men, with hospitality, government and healthcare the sectors hardest hit.
By Manuel Gutierrez, Consulting Economist to NKBA
Following decades of ever-increasing involvement by women in the labor force, they finally reached parity with men by the end of 2019. That milestone was short-lived, however, as women have dropped out of the workforce in greater numbers than men over the past year — a direct result of the pandemic.
Just before the pandemic began, the number of female workers actually exceeded that of males. There were 76.16 million women employed in January 2020, a fraction above the 76.07 million men, but, for various reasons, the pandemic had a greater adverse impact on females.
Since the start of the pandemic, women have lost a million more jobs than men.
Figure 1 shows historical labor participation rates by gender since 1960. It is readily apparent that male involvement has followed a secular decline, falling gradually from nearly 83% in 1960 to 67.3% this past March — a 15-point drop in 60 years.
Females, on the other hand, have mostly gone in the opposite direction, and to an even greater degree, since their increase has exceeded the decrease by males. In 1960, just 36.6% of women were employed outside the home, barely more than 1 in 3. But just 40 years later, by 2000, 60% of women were employed. It was a sea change in a relatively short period of time. Somewhat discouragingly, that percentage has declined to 56.1% over the past 20 years.
What Figure 1 does not provide is the reasons why the pandemic has been harder on women than on men, reducing their employed ranks by 4.64 million jobs, from 76.16 million to the current 71.52 million, a drop of 6.2%.
For males, the downturn hasn’t been as steep. They have lost 3.62 million jobs during the same period —1 million fewer positions lost — which translates to a decrease of just under 5%.
Figure 2 breaks down the losses for both genders since January 2020 by industry. The numbers in the bars reflect job losses since then, just before the pandemic began.
Although for most industries, both males and females suffered comparable losses, there are several striking differences, led by Hospitality.
The female-to-male ratio of workers in that industry is 54/46. Since the pandemic began, however, there have been 1.388 million job losses for women vs. 1.195 million for men for the sector, a difference of nearly 200,000 jobs. It translates into 16% more job losses for females in Hospitality than for males.
For Government, the gap is even more striking. Although 58% of government workers are women, compared to 42% men, job losses for women have been 50% higher. There have been 789,000 jobs lost for women vs. 523,000 for men. That’s a difference of 266,000. Together, these two industries represent 459,000 more job losses for women than for men, a number that approaches half of the 1 million job loss differential.
One explanation for women losing more ground than men during the pandemic is that there is a greater concentration of females in industries that were hardest hit by COVID-19, such as Hospitality and Entertainment. A second reason is that some women were in jobs that could not be performed at home and they made the decision to stay at home to take care of children who were not physically in school or daycare during the crisis, or other family members, sacrificing their jobs, at least in the short term. Whether those jobs will every come back remains to be seen.
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