Women Add Three-Quarters of the Jobs as Low-Wage Sectors Gain, NWLC Analysis Shows

(Washington, D.C.)  Women gained three out of every four jobs added in August and their unemployment rate declined to 6.3 percent, the lowest rate since December 2008, but job gains were concentrated in low-wage sectors, according to new analysis by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) of data released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“Three-quarters of the 169,000 jobs added in August went to women, but more than half of those new jobs are in low-wage sectors,” said Joan Entmacher, NWLC Vice President for Family Economic Security. “Many hard-working women don’t earn enough to support their families, and millions of Americans are still looking for work. It’s time for Congress to stop slowing the recovery and start strengthening it – by ending sequestration, investing in job creation, and raising the minimum wage.”

Nearly 60 percent of the net gains in August came in five low-wage sectors: retail (+44,000), leisure and hospitality (+27,000), temporary help (+13,100), home health care services (+9,500) and nursing and residential care facilities (+5,200), despite the fact that these sectors account for just over one-quarter (27 percent) of the economy

Women’s largest jobs gains were in education and health services (+49,000), retail (+36,400) and professional and business services (+24,000), which includes the low-wage temporary help sector. Women’s largest losses were in financial activities (-9,000), manufacturing (-5,000) and information (-3,000).

Men’s largest gains were in manufacturing (+19,000), transportation and warehousing (+11,700) and the public sector (+11,000).  Men’s largest losses were in information (-15,000), education and health services (-6,000), and construction (-2,000).

The unemployment rate for adult women declined to 6.3 percent in August, the lowest rate since December 2008 – but is still nearly two percentage points higher than at the start of the recession in December 2007. 

Nearly 4.3 million jobless workers have been unable to find work after more than six months of searching.  About four in ten adult jobless workers are long-term unemployed.  These workers are being hit hard by the cuts to unemployment insurance benefits under the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration.   According to the National Employment Law Project, 48 states and the District of Columbia have already made deep cuts to unemployment insurance, and this week in Nevada, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate at 9.5 percent, benefits were cut by 59 percent for more than 20,000 long term unemployed workers.  

Unemployment rates for many vulnerable groups increased between July and August; adult African-American women, adult African-American men, adult Hispanic men and single mothers all saw higher unemployment rates last month.  The rate for adult Hispanic women declined.  The rates for these groups are about one-and-a-half times higher than at the start of the recession.

Just 169,000 jobs were added in August, and at this pace, it will take until early 2023 to close the jobs gap (defined as the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month), according to estimates by the Hamilton Project. Canceling sequestration could have a substantial and positive impact on job growth; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that canceling sequestration would increase employment a year from now by 900,000 new jobs.  

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