Jobs

We’re back this Friday with your monthly update on the BLS jobs numbers. Other things are back too – cooler temps are back, Monday night football is back, and kids are back to school – but one thing that isn’t back are teachers. Local education lost jobs last month, capping a year of losses totaling over 83,000. In fact, since the recovery started in June 2009, local education has lost 301,000 jobs. This is bad news for kids and for women, who make up over 70 percent of the positions in this sector.

These education losses are just part of the ongoing public sector losses. I know we hammered it home last month, but the big story for women this month is still public sector job losses. Over the recovery, women’s public sector job losses have wiped out a whopping 45 percent of their private sector gains. Since June 2009, women have now lost 450,000 public sector jobs, while they gained 999,000 private sector jobs.

Though the month wasn’t great all around - the economy added 96,000 jobs in August and the overall unemployment rate dropped slightly to 8.1 percent, hovering near the level it has been at since the start of 2012 - one positive trend is a slight decline in adult women’s unemployment rate– it is now 7.3 percent, the lowest rate since April 2009, though not by much. Read more »

A long holiday weekend is nearly upon us, and I’ll admit, my mind is wandering a bit today to non-work-related thoughts of beaches and barbecues. But before we all head off to celebrate a Labor Day free of labor, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the origins of this end-of-summer tradition.

According to the Department of Labor, “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” The first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City, and was organized by the Central Labor Union, which later urged labor organizations in other cities to celebrate an annual “workingmen’s holiday” on the first Monday in September.

Of course, today we recognize that it is not only “workingmen,” but also millions of working women who have made great contributions “to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”  After decades of historic strides, women now make up about half of the U.S. workforce, and have entered into fields from manufacturing to medicine in numbers that many would not have imagined a generation ago. Read more »

It’s officially back-to-school season and the shopping is in full swing. Families around the country are out buying school supplies, new clothes, or maybe picking up a few things for that last summer project they haven’t quite finished yet.

But this August, you may have noticed a difference at your local stores – more men staffing the cash register, the customer service desk, or helping you search the aisles for that elusive item on your shopping list.

That’s because since the recovery began in June 2009, men have gained 395,600 jobs in retail – almost 2.5 times the number of jobs that women have lost (163,400) in the same period.

If you read our blog or our report on how women are doing three years into the recovery, you know that public sector job losses are really slowing the recovery for women. For every 10 private sector jobs women have gained in the recovery, they’ve lost more than four public sector jobs.

But the impact of the unprecedented public sector job cuts we’ve seen recently is far broader. A new report from Brookings highlights these key facts:

• Teachers (overwhelmingly women) experienced the largest number of public sector job losses. But the biggest percentage declines were in public safety jobs: emergency responders (-43.5%), air-traffic controllers (-28.5%), and fire fighters (-18.9%).
• The percentage of workers employed in the public sector (federal, state and local) as a share of the population is at its lowest level in over 30 years.
• If public sector employment had remained steady since the start of the recession, the economy would have an additional 1.7 million jobs and the unemployment rate would be 7.1 percent instead of 8.2 percent.

And public sector job cuts aren’t just hurting workers, their families, and the economy today. The Brookings report also looks at the long-term impact on the economy of the cuts in just one area – education. Fewer teachers mean more students per class: and recent research, cited in the report, finds that larger class sizes mean lower wages for today’s children when they join the workforce. Read more »

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.

Read more »

Jobs data released this morning for the month of May brought mixed news. Our analysis shows that actual job growth in May was meager; just 69,000 jobs were added to the overall economy. The picture for women was brighter – women gained 95,000 jobs in May, the second largest monthly gain for women in the last twelve months. However, there isn’t much to celebrate as men lost 26,000 jobs last month.

How does this affect the recovery overall? Women still account for a disproportionately small share of the gains in the recovery – women have gained only 22.5 percent of the 2.5 million net jobs added to the economy since the recovery started in June 2009, even though they suffered 28.4 percent of the job loss in the recession (December 2007-June 2009). But losing jobs for men is no way to close the gap.

The bottom line is that we still have a long way to go for a full recovery for everyone.

Key facts from today’s data:

• We need more jobs. Women have regained only about a quarter of the jobs they lost in the recession while men have regained just about a third. Overall we still have nearly five million fewer jobs now than we did when the recession began in December 2007.
• We really, really, need more public sector jobs. The public sector lost 13,000 jobs last month (10,000 by men, 3,000 by women). For the recovery overall, public sector losses have hurt growth: the 601,000 jobs lost in the public sector have wiped out nearly 20 percent of private sector gains. For women public sector losses in the recovery have been even more painful; these losses have wiped out nearly 40 percent of their private sector gains.

  

• Little changed with unemployment rates overall. Adult women’s unemployment rate stayed steady at 7.4 percent for the third month in a row, while adult men’s unemployment rate went up from last month, to 7.8 percent in May.

Two steps forward, one step back. That’s the story of the recovery for women.

Our analysis of April’s monthly jobs data brought fairly positive news for women, who gained 73 percent of the 115,000 jobs last month, the largest share of monthly job gains for women since the start of the recovery. But the total monthly job gains in April were the lowest in 2012. And the story for women during the recovery overall isn’t as rosy.

Women have gained only 16 percent of the nearly 2.5 million jobs added during the recovery, and their slow gains are driven largely by public sector losses. In fact, for every two jobs women gained in the private sector during the recovery, they lost one in the public sector. Men also have lost public sector jobs during the recovery, but their public sector job losses are smaller both in absolute terms and relative to their private sector job gains, as the chart below shows.

Other fast facts you should know:

• Unemployment rates dropped slightly. April brought a slight decrease in the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent overall. Men’s unemployment rate also dropped slightly, to 7.5 percent. However, the unemployment rate for women held steady at 7.4 percent. The decreases in the unemployment rates are largely due to people leaving the labor force.

It’s the first Friday of the month and we’re back with our analysis of this month’s jobs data. While the recovery isn’t yet in full swing for women, March’s jobs numbers brought some good news.

Here is what you should know:

• Unemployment rates dropped. March was the first month in which adult women’s unemployment rate (7.4 percent) was lower than their 7.6 percent unemployment rate at the start of the recovery in June 2009. Adult men’s unemployment rate was slightly higher than women’s in March (7.6 percent), but was down 2.3 percentage points since the recovery began.
• Adult black women’s unemployment rate remained above their rate at the start of the recovery. In March, adult black women’s unemployment rate was 12.3 percent, still higher than it was in June 2009 (11.6 percent). The unemployment rates for single moms, adult black men, and adult Hispanic men and women were lower than at the start of the recovery, but all had unemployment rates that remained well above the national average.

Thank Senator Harkin for Working to Rebuild America

The Rebuild America Act lays out a vision of a better America for women and their families.

Now this is more like it! You and I both know that we've had to spend a lot of time playing defense to protect critical programs and hard-won rights. But while we've been on the defensive, we've also been advocating for policies that lift up and support ALL Americans and that provide a clear path to a better future.

Now our efforts are paying off. Just yesterday, Senator Tom Harkin introduced the Rebuild America Act, which would improve economic security for women and their families. The Rebuild America Act makes investments to promote widely shared prosperity and finances them in a fair and fiscally responsible way.

This type of opportunity doesn't come along every day. Join us in saying 'Thank you!' to Senator Harkin for introducing this important bill!

What kinds of prosperity are we talking about? First and foremost — jobs. The Rebuild America Act recognizes the need for quantity and quality when it comes to job creation. The bill provides funding to help states and localities hire teachers and other public service workers — an especially crucial sector for women, who have lost nearly 70 percent of the public sector jobs cut since June of 2009. It also invests in infrastructure and manufacturing — and increases support for job training and education to expand access to these jobs among underrepresented populations. Read more »

On Tuesday from 1-2pm ET NWLC’s Vice President of Family Economic Security Joan Entmacher and I will be live chatting with The Nation’s Bryce Covert about what obstacles women still face in the economy. We’ll be talking about women dropping out of the labor force, being left behind in the recovery, receiving unfair pay, and other topics. Join us and bring your questions!

A few facts to get you thinking:

1. Did you know that while women suffered 30 percent of the job loss during the recession, they’ve accounted less than 12 percent of the job growth in the recovery?