Abby Lane, Fellow

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My Take

ABC’s “Work It” should be Fired Immediately

Posted by
Abby Lane, Fellow
Danielle Jackson, Online Outreach Associate
Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst
| Posted on: December 15, 2011 at 10:30 am

One of the best cures for the post-holiday blues is the crop of new TV shows in January. One new show on ABC, “Work It”, is definitely going to boost us out of any blues – by making us see red.

According to ABC, “Work It” is:

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Tags: Employment, Television & Media, Unemployment, Women in the Judiciary, Education & Title IX | 9 comments

November’s Drop in Unemployment News Leaves Vulnerable Groups Behind

Posted by Abby Lane, Fellow | Posted on: December 02, 2011 at 05:00 pm

Today’s jobs data seemed to have some good news – overall unemployment dropped to 8.6 percent, a level of unemployment we haven’t seen since before the start of the recovery.  However, our analysis shows some troubling trends. Despite the decreased unemployment in November, single mothers, black women, and black men saw their unemployment rise. And the reason for the drop in overall unemployment isn’t a big surge in the number of Americans finding work. In fact, more workers dropped out of the labor force last month than found jobs—and all of the workers who left the labor force last month were women and female teens.

More numbers behind the headlines:

  • Public sector losses continue. Last month the public sector lost 20,000 jobs for a total of 568,000 jobs lost in the public sector since the recovery began in June 2009. Nearly 66 percent of the public sector losses over this time are women’s job losses.
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Tags: Jobs, Long-Term Unemployment, Public Sector, Recession, Recovery, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Unemployment | Add new comment

Senate May Pass Veterans' Jobs Measure in Time for Veterans Day (Because Millionaires Won't Be Asked to Pay for It)

Posted by Abby Lane, Fellow | Posted on: November 09, 2011 at 12:45 pm

As we've reported, conservative-led Senate filibusters have blocked consideration of a series of job creation measures over the past few weeks: President Obama's comprehensive American Jobs Act, a bill to keep teachers and first responders on the job, and a bill to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. These investments would have been paid for with a modest tax increase on income above one million — which explains much of the opposition.

Finally, it looks as though a jobs measure might come to a vote — and might actually get through the Senate. Tomorrow, the day before Veterans' Day, the Senate is expected to vote on an amendment, the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, that would help veterans find work. That's good news for returning veterans, both male and female.

Post-9/11 veterans are struggling to find jobs and women veterans in particular are having a tough time. In 2010, the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans averaged 11.5 percent, but the rate for women post-9/11 veterans was even higher at 12.0 percent. Post-9/11 women veterans had higher unemployment than their male post-9/11 veteran counterparts, non-veteran adult women, and non-veteran adult men in 2010.

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Tags: Military (Women in the Military), Unemployment, Employment, Poverty & Income Support | 2 comments

NWLC Got It Right, PolitiFact Says

Posted by Abby Lane, Fellow | Posted on: November 04, 2011 at 04:49 pm

Earlier this week NWLC got fact checked. And PolitiFact Ohio agrees that we got it right.

PolitiFact Ohio used their Truth-O-Meter to test a statement from Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH) which cited NWLC's poverty day report in a defense of Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides crucial health care services to women. PolitiFact concludes that Rep. Tim Ryan correctly stated that the poverty rate for women was the highest in nearly two decades, based on our finding that women's poverty rate, 14.5 percent, was the highest in 17 years.

Additionally, Rep. Tim Ryan stated that attacks to Planned Parenthood come at a time "when 1 in 5 women under 65 don't have access to health care." Rep. Ryan's statement is based on our analysis, which found that the percentage of women ages 18 to 64 without health insurance coverage rose to 19.7 percent in 2010, the highest rate in more than a decade.

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Tags: Health Insurance, Data on Poverty & Income, Health Care & Reproductive Rights, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

In a Month of Weak Job Growth, Women Finally Make Gains

Posted by Abby Lane, Fellow | Posted on: November 04, 2011 at 03:14 pm

Today’s jobs data brought surprising news – not only did women gain jobs, they actually gained most of the jobs added to the economy in October. However, our analysis shows that the news isn’t all good – overall unemployment was 9.0 percent and women’s unemployment dropped by just 0.1 percentage points to 8.0 percent, still higher than the 7.7 percent unemployment they had at the beginning of the recovery.  In fact, since the official start of the recovery in June 2009, women have actually lost 117,000 jobs, despite the fact that the economy added more than 1.0 million jobs during that time.

The data show that the job market remains bleak.  The unemployment rate overall hardly dropped, nearly 14 million Americans are officially unemployed, and millions more are underemployed or have given up on finding work. Despite these numbers, just yesterday, the Senate blocked yet another jobs bill, the Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. This bill was just one of three blocked in the last month by the Senate, which also blocked the American Jobs Act and another of its components, the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act.

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Tags: Jobs, Recovery, Senate, Teachers & First Responders Back to Work, Unemployment, Unemployment | Add new comment