Jobs

Manufacturing’s been on everyone’s lips lately.  Economists are extolling its recent growth and policy makers, both Democrats and Republicans, are suggesting we should promote it further.

But NWLC’s new report, A “Man”ufacturing Comeback:  Men’s and Women’s Employment Gains and Losses in 2011 has a few facts about manufacturing that no one’s mentioned yet:

MANuFACTuring statistic #1: In 2011 manufacturing employment increased for the first time in more than a decade, with annual average employment rising by 205,000 jobs.  Unfortunately, women did not share in these gains.  In fact, between 2010 and 2011 men’s annual average employment in manufacturing increased by 230,000 jobs while women’s dropped by 25,000 jobs.  This divergence was a change from the trend during the recession, when the declines in manufacturing employment were borne proportionately by women and men.

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.

As we reported Friday, the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that December 2011 marked the first month with net jobs gained for women during the recovery, but their unemployment rate increased to 7.9 percent (up from 7.8 percent in November 2011 and 7.6 percent at the start of the recovery in June 2009). The data also show that the unemployment rate among teens has actually dropped 1.6 percentage points during the recovery – but it’s probably tough for teens to get very excited about their prospects when their December 2011 unemployment rate was still 23.1 percent, nearly three times higher than the overall unemployment rate (8.5 percent).

In other good-but-not-good-enough news for teens last week, President Obama announced a new initiative called Summer Jobs+, which aims to create 250,000 employment opportunities (including at least 100,000 paid positions) for low-income youth in the summer of 2012 through public-private partnerships. The urgent need for a response to the teen unemployment crisis is clear: teens lost nearly one million jobs during the recession and saw their unemployment rate rise from 16.3 percent in June 2007, the last summer before the recession, to 24.7 percent in June 2009. Overall unemployment among teens has declined only slightly in subsequent summers, and for young minority women, the recovery has been worse than the recession. Analysis by NWLC shows that black and Hispanic female teens are the only groups of teens who suffered larger increases in unemployment during the first two years of the recovery (June 2009-June 2011) than they did during the recession. Read more »

NWLC has been crunching numbers all morning on the newly released jobs data for December. The data show that women held slightly more jobs in December 2011 than at the start of the recovery in June 2009 – finally putting women into the black and making December the first month women saw a net gain in the recovery. However, women have now gained just 3 percent of the jobs added during the recovery. Additionally, despite women’s job gains, women’s unemployment rate in December was still higher than at the start of the recovery. Men’s unemployment rate dropped and is now about the same as women’s.

Read more »

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.

At a time when the unemployment rate remains at a staggering 9% overall, young people are frustrated. Ideas are continuously being bandied across political news programs and between politicians. Unfortunately, it is rare to hear the ideas of those in my generation who may be the most affected by the lack of a real economic recovery in the long run.

Last week, alongside about 40 college students and recent graduates, I had the opportunity to attend the conference, “Jobs for Young Americans Day on the Hill” hosted by the Young Invincibles.

Commencing the day- long conference, we visited the offices of both Democratic and Republican law makers to discuss ways in which young people can obtain employment under the American Jobs Act; specifically the Pathways Back to Work Fund, which would provide industry based training for young adults, helping to prepare for long-term employment. Read more »

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. Read more »

Last week, Senate Republicans and two Democrats voted to block debate of the full American Jobs Act, even though 14 million Americans – 9.1 percent – are still looking for work. Now, the Obama Administration and Senator Harry Reid are looking to take up the Jobs Act one piece at a time to tackle our nation’s jobs deficit.

First up on the agenda is the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act. It’s a part of the American Jobs Act that particularly helps women, and it couldn’t have come sooner. Since the recovery began in June 2009, women have lost 264,000 jobs while men have gained 1.1 million jobs. The job-hemorrhaging public sector is primarily to blame for women’s dismal employment picture.

Local government education, a field which is three quarters women, lost more than 255,000 jobs since June 2009. So the $30 billion the Senate bill would provide to protect or create about 400,000 education jobs would be a boon to women’s employment, families’ economic security, and children’s education. Read more »

The contrast couldn’t be more striking.

Today, the Senate is expected to address the most urgent deficit facing this country: the jobs deficit. Senators will vote tonight on the President’s plan to put people back to work and get the economy moving again. The plan would keep teachers and first responders on the job, invest in rebuilding our nation's infrastructure, provide job training, create incentives to hire the long-term unemployed, provide help for disadvantaged workers, extend emergency unemployment benefits, and prohibit discrimination against jobless workers.   Read more »

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 »