Economy

It’s the first month of jobs data for 2012 and January is off to a good start, according to NWLC’s number crunching this morning. The newly released jobs data for January brought some good news – drops in unemployment and job gains for both women and men this month.

Here are a few things you should know from today’s jobs data:

• Women’s and men’s unemployment is the same for the first time since the start of the recession. When the recession officially began in December 2007, the unemployment rate for both women and men stood at 4.4 percent. Over two and a half years later, their unemployment rates finally meet again – at 7.7 percent. Since the start of the recovery in June 2009, men’s unemployment has dropped 2.2 percentage points, while women’s unemployment has essentially remained flat – rising slightly from 7.6 percent in June 2009.

Today’s jobs data may bring better news than last month, but it certainly isn’t great news for women. Our analysis shows that, yet again, women’s unemployment inched up this month, demonstrating that the small gains in jobs weren’t enough to keep up with the additional women looking for work. In fact, women gained just 4,000 of the 103,000 jobs added to the economy this month. These numbers are again driven by public sector losses. In September, the public sector lost 34,000 jobs, 82 percent of which were women’s jobs. Read more »