Great Recession

Third Anniversary of the Recovery Shows Job Growth for Women Slowed by Public Sector Job Losses

Submitted by asklar on Fri, 07/13/2012 - 10:55am

The deep recession that began in December 2007 and cost nearly 7.5 million jobs was harder on male workers, but the recovery that officially began in June 2009 has been slower for women. After losing ground at the start of the recovery, the pace of the recovery has picked up for women. Three years into the recovery (June 2009 to June 2012), women have gained back 24 percent of the jobs they lost during the recession; men have gained back 39 percent. However, heavy public sector job losses continue to hinder the recovery for both women and men, but especially for women: for every 10 private sector jobs women gained in the first three years of the recovery, they lost more than 4 public sector jobs.

URL:

http://www.nwlc.org/resource/third-anniversary-recovery-shows-job-growth-women-slowed-public-sector-job-losses

Member Organization:

National Women's Law Center

Have We Gone From a Mancession to a Shecovery? Not Quite.

Teaser:

The jobs numbers that came out on Friday looked so much better than what we’re used to—or at least didn’t suck quite as hard as usual—that there was some victory dancing in the blogosphere. And there are certainly some positive signs. But a premature victory for women once again reared its head.

Editorial:

From The Nation:

The fears of a mancession have returned in a new shape, as David Leonhardt wondered if we’re about to move out of the “hecovery” period—in which men made job gains while women lost them—to a “shecovery.” He points out that over the past two months, the number of employed men only rose by 83,000, while women were up 192,000 jobs.

There may be a problem with this data. A large part of the jump that Leonhardt saw in women’s employment is because the BLS, as it sometimes does, updated its population estimates, “finding” more women workers than had been previously accounted for. Yet it didn’t add those women evenly across the year. As Mike Konczal notes, “December showed women gaining 584,000 jobs as a result of statistical population adjustments that, in reality, should have been smoothed across a longer time frame.” The jump in women’s jobs is mostly artificial.

Still, the picture is starting to look better for women. Just as recently as August women were losing jobs, while men were getting back to work. Now women are starting to join in the economy’s very slow job creation: according to the National Women’s Law Center, they gained about one-third of the roughly 200,000 jobs added in January and February.

[...]

Source:

The Nation

URL:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166742/have-we-gone-mancession-shecovery-not-quite

Date:

March 13, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

One Mancession Later, Are Women Really Victors in the New Economy?

Teaser:

Six years ago, the housing bubble imploded, igniting the recession. Construction and manufacturing soon crumbled, taking jobs mostly held by men down with them. Not long after, AEI’s Mark J. Perry referred to the “mancession” when testifying before Congress, and hand-wringing trend pieces, worrying that men would experience a permanent slump in employment and wages, began to appear.

Editorial:

From The Nation:

The apotheosis of this genre, Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men,” appeared in The Atlantic in the summer of 2010, going one step further to suggest that an “unprecedented role reversal [was] now under way.” What if, Rosin asked, women are better suited to today’s economy? What if the mancession presages a new economy in which women’s skills and talents are prized over men’s, and men’s economic prospects never recover? (To see how this trope lives on, just watch the trailers for ABC’s now-defunct show Work It in which two out-of-work—male—mechanics resorted to dressing in drag to score jobs.)

Women make up almost half of the workforce today, up from about thirty percent in 1940. We hold over half of middle management jobs. More women than men are employed in growing industries like healthcare and retail sales. Shortly after Rosin’s article appeared, a study found that young, urban, childless women make more than similar men do.

But anyone who declares that women have “won” the new economy is premature at best. Women may be over-represented in growing sectors, but those jobs pay poorly, offer few benefits, come with grudging work and provide little opportunity for advancement. The edge on wages experienced by young women evaporates as they progress in their careers. When women do get to middle management, they’re paid less than men and they struggle to advance much further up the ladder. And women with children are left far behind.

[...]

Source:

The Nation

URL:

http://www.thenation.com/article/166468/one-mancession-later-are-women-really-victors-new-economy

Date:

February 29, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Improved Job Growth in January for Both Women and Men: Women Re-Entering the Labor Force, But Men Leaving

Submitted by asklar on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 12:37am

According to an Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the February employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth improved in January with 243,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls. In January, women gained 95,000 jobs (almost 40 percent, above their share for the past year) and men gained 148,000.

by Institute for Women's Policy Research (February 2012)

URL:

http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/improved-job-growth-in-january-for-both-women-and-men-women-re-entering-the-labor-force-but-men-leaving

Member Organization:

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Jobs Report: Unemployment Rates For Men And Women Equal For First Time Since Recession Started

Teaser:

The economic recovery has been more favorable to men than it has been for women, and for the first time since the start of the recession, men and women are seeing the same rate of unemployment.

Editorial:

From the Huffington Post:

Of the 243,000 jobs added in January, 39 percent were filled by women, according to the National Women's Law Center. This translated to a 0.3 percent drop in unemployment for men and a 0.2 percent drop for women, with their respective unemployment rates leveling out at 7.7 percent. (This figure represents adult unemployment and falls below the nationwide rate of 8.3 percent, which accounts for unemployed teenagers.)

Women are trailing behind men in the economic recovery, claiming a mere eight percent of the 1.9 million jobs that have been added to the economy since the end of the recession in June 2009, a NWLC study shows. Unemployment rates for women have actually risen from 7.6 percent in June 2009 to today's figure of 7.7 percent, while men have seen unemployment fall from 9.9 to 7.7 percent over the course of the recovery.

[...]

Source:

Huffington Post

URL:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/03/jobs-report-women_n_1253092.html

Date:

February 4, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Is the Recovery Starting for Women? Slow Job Growth in October for Both Women and Men

Submitted by asklar on Sat, 11/12/2011 - 5:03pm

Job growth slowed in October with 80,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls. This is down from 104,000 new jobs in August and 158,000 in September. (September’s gains included more than 40,000 Verizon workers returning after a strike. August and September’s totals were revised by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in November). Women’s employment now appears to be rising. In October women gained 66,000 jobs, but men gained only 14,000. The revised numbers for August and September show 136,000 new jobs for women compared with 126,000 for men.

URL:

http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/is-the-recovery-starting-for-women-slow-job-growth-in-october-for-both-women-and-men/at_download/file

Member Organization:

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Modest Recovery Largely Leaves Women Behind

Submitted by asklar on Mon, 10/31/2011 - 9:40am

The deep recession that began in December 2007 cost workers nearly 7.5 million jobs before it officially ended in June 2009. Overall job growth during the recovery has been weak; the economy added only 841,000 jobs between June 2009 and September 2011. Although unemployment remains high and job growth unacceptably slow for both men and women, it is striking that women have actually lost jobs during the recovery.

URL:

http://www.nwlc.org/resource/modest-recovery-largely-leaves-women-behind

Member Organization:

National Women's Law Center

Women and Men Living on the Edge: Economic Insecurity After the Great Recession

Submitted by asklar on Tue, 10/25/2011 - 9:45am

The IWPR/Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security, like several other recent surveys, finds that the effects of the 2007–2009 recession, known as the Great Recession, are both broad and deep. The IWPR/Rockefeller survey shows that more than one and a half years after the recession came to an official end, and the recovery supposedly began, many women and men report that they are still suffering significant hardships. They are having difficulty paying for basics like food (26 million women and 15 million men), health care (46 million women and 34 million men), rent or mortgage (32 million women and 25 million men), transportation (37 million women and 28 million men), utility bills (41 million women and 27 million men), and they have difficulty saving for the future (65 million women and 53 million men). On almost every measure of insecurity and hardship the survey reveals the Great Recession has visited more hardship on women than it has on men.

URL:

http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/women-and-men-living-on-the-edge-economic-insecurity-after-the-great-recession

Member Organization:

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Retirement on the Edge: Women, Men, and Economic Insecurity After the Great Recession

Submitted by asklar on Mon, 10/24/2011 - 11:22pm

The Great Recession dramatically altered the lives of many Americans, creating pronounced economic stress and uncertainty for both individuals and families. Even after the recession was officially declared over, unemployment levels remained persistently high, while housing values remained notably low. These circumstances led the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) to develop and analyze the IWPR/Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security, which was administered to 2,746 adults aged 18 and older between September and November 2010. The sample for the survey was stratified to yield approximately equal numbers of white, black, and Hispanic respondents, with results weighted by American Community Survey data to reflect the non-institutional, adult population of the nation.

URL:

http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/retirement-on-the-edge-women-men-and-economic-insecurity-after-the-great-recession/

Member Organization:

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Report: In a Down Economy, Fewer Births

Teaser:

A sharp decline in fertility rates in the United States that started in 2008 is closely linked to the souring of the economy that began about the same time, according to a new analysis of multiple economic and demographic data sources by the Pew Research Center.

Editorial:

From the Executive Summary:

The year 2007 marked a record high number of births in the U.S.—4,316,233. Since that time, births have been declining, even as the U.S. population continues to grow. Preliminary data for 2009 indicate that the number of births dropped to 4,131,018—the lowest number since 2004. Provisional data show that in 2010 births numbered just over 4 million (4,007,000).

A state-level look at fertility illustrates the strength of the correlation between lower birth rates and economic distress. States experiencing the largest economic declines in 2007 and 2008 were most likely to experience relatively large fertility declines from 2008 to 2009, the analysis finds. States with relatively minor economic declines were likely to experience relatively small declines.

For example, North Dakota, which experienced one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates (3.1%) in 2008, was the only state to show even a slight increase (0.7%) in births from 2008 to 2009. All other states and the District of Columbia experienced either no change, or declines, in births during that period.

These correlations are based on fertility trends calculated using data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau and economic trend data from six familiar indicators (per capita income, per capita gross domestic product, employment rate, unemployment rate, initial unemployment claims, and foreclosure rates) tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and RealtyTrac.

Since 2007, the U.S. fertility rate—which controls for variations in the size of the female population of childbearing age—has dropped markedly from 69.6 births per thousand women ages 15-44 to 66.7 births per thousand women ages 15-44 in 2009. Provisional data for 2010 indicate a further drop to 64.7 births per thousand women ages 15-44.

The Pew Research Center analysis also finds evidence of an association between economic hard times and fertility declines by race and ethnicity. Hispanics, whose employment levels and household wealth were particularly hard hit by the Great Recession, have experienced the largest fertility declines of the nation’s three major racial and ethnic groups. Conversely, whites have experienced smaller economic hardships, and smaller declines in fertility. From 2008 to 2009, birth rates dropped by 5.9% among Hispanic women, while birth rates dropped 2.4% among black women and 1.6% among white women.

...

Source:

Pew Research Center

URL:

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/10/12/in-a-down-economy-fewer-births/?src=prc-headline

Date:

October 17, 2011

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

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