The pandemic has upended work, school and home life for everyone in the United States, but it’s women who continue to shoulder the heaviest burden. New figures released by the U.S. Labor Department on October 2 show four times as many women as men left the workforce last month. It’s part of a catastrophic trend for working women that shows no signs of stopping.
Here, several of the most eye-opening findings.
Over 800K women left the workforce last month
The U.S. Labor Department describes people as having left or dropped out of the workforce if they are no longer working and no longer actively seeking employment. In September alone, 865,000 women over 20 dropped out of the American workforce compared with 216,000 men in the same age group, according to the Labor Department report. To put that in perspective, that means around 80% of the 1.1 million workers who left the workforce last month were women.
Women of color are being disproportionately impacted
Of the nearly 1 million women who dropped out of the workforce last month, 58,000 are Black and 324,000 are Latina. These women have also been the most impacted by layoffs and closures since the start of the pandemic. While the unemployment rate sits at 7.9% for women overall, the unemployment rates for Black women and Latina women are 11.1% and 11%, respectively. The unemployment rate for Latinas actually increased from 10.5% in August, even as unemployment rates for all other groups of workers improved.
Why women are making an exodus from the workforce
The reasons for the mass exit of women from the workforce are varied and complex. Not only are women struggling against high unemployment rates, they are also being impacted by major inequalities in the home. Consider the following worrisome stats:
Moms are three times as likely as dads to be responsible for all of the child care and housework right now. This new stat was revealed in a September 30 report by Lean In and McKinsey & Company.
Working moms are 1.5 times more likely than working dads to spend three or more hours a day on housework and child care, according to the report. Thousands of children around the country are still doing the majority of their learning at home. For women who are tasked with working and caring for kids at the same time, the burden can feel impossible.
Women in the U.S. are generally paid less than men, earning an average of 82 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work. The disparity is even greater among Black, Latina and Native American women. In two-parent households where both parents are working and struggling with the demands of distance learning and limited child care, it may make sense for women to leave work to handle the responsibilities of home life simply because they make less money.
The big picture
At the end of 2019, women outnumbered men in the workplace for only the second time in U.S. history. Now, women now account for only 49.7% of the workforce. Yet, most families are doing whatever they can to get through this difficult time, even if that means giving up some income or placing career aspirations on the back burner. It’s an unfair sacrifice that de-prioritizes women’s careers just as they were making great strides.
What’s more, the devastating impact the pandemic is having on women’s work might not be a fleeting trend. Based on the results of their study, Lean In and McKinsey & Company predict the pandemic may unravel years’ worth of female progress in the workplace, resulting in fewer female business leaders and fewer women on track to become leaders.
A separate study published in August by researchers at Northwestern University predicts that the pandemic may actually widen the gender pay gap by an average of two cents.
While it bears noting that no two women are in the exact same situation, the pandemic is undermining women’s progress at work and destroying hard-fought careers. And in this moment, it’s unclear exactly how or when we’ll be able to undo the damage.