Long-Term Unemployment

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.

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.