Abby Lane, Fellow

Just this Tuesday, workers and advocates joined together in a National Day of Action to fight for an increase in the minimum wage. Two days later, we have cause to celebrate.

Today, Representative George Miller and Senator Tom Harkin introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012. In a strong showing of support in the House, the bill had over 100 cosponsors who recognize the importance of raising the nation’s minimum wage.

Millions of workers – mostly women – struggle to make ends meet on minimum wage earnings. The last increase to the federal minimum wage came three years ago, to just $7.25 per hour. This wage adds up to only $14,500 per year for full-time, year-round workers – wages that would leave a working mother and two children below the poverty line.

They say that bad things come in threes. So in honor of the “recovery”, which celebrates its third anniversary with today’s release of new jobs data for June, let me give you the three bad facts about the recovery for women so far (though I promise some good news at the end of the post!):

Fact 1: Public sector job losses are damaging women’s recovery.

Our analysis of the new data shows that women’s private sector job gains in the recovery are being hugely offset by their public sector losses, both last month and during the recovery as whole. Since the start of the recovery in June 2009, women and men have both gained private sector jobs and they have both lost public sector jobs. The public sector losses have been bad for men – but terrible for women. For every 10 private sector jobs women gained in the recovery, women lost over 4 public sector jobs. In contrast, for every 10 private sector jobs men gained in the recovery, men lost 1 public sector job.