‘Female-Led Recession’: How Economists Think Unemployment Will Impact Women and Minorities

Skimm This

theSkimm

News

4.5 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As of this week, one in four US workers has filed for unemployment benefits. But economists say the historic numbers don’t tell the whole story. And they’re warning that women, and in particular women of color, are being disproportionately affected. We’ll break down what this record unemployment means, how the situation compares to past recessions, and what the impact is on women and women of color. Also: now that unemployment is at a record-high, a lot of people are looking for work. We spoke to a career expert to get some tips on how to job search during a pandemic. And finally, you asked and we Skimm’d: who’s even hiring right now? Not a trick question. Think: anyone who’s seeing an increase in demand. Like food and delivery services. On this episode, you’ll hear from: Kathryn A. Edwards, associate economist at the RAND Corporation Amanda Augustine, career expert for TopResume What’s something about the COVID-19 pandemic that you’ve been looking for more answers on? Email us at audio@theskimm.com and call and leave us a voicemail at: 646-461-6370. You might hear your message on the show and have your question answered. If you want to add theSkimm to your daily routine, sign-up for our free newsletter the Daily Skimm. It’s everything you need to know to start your day, right in your inbox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Last week, more than two million people told the US government,
0:03.7	I'm unemployed, and I need help.
0:06.5	We've been hearing numbers like this for weeks,
0:08.7	ever since businesses shut down over the COVID-19 pandemic.
0:12.0	Since then, more than 40 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the US.
0:17.2	That's one in four US workers.
0:19.7	So today, we're going to get into what these unemployment figures tell us,
0:23.5	what they don't tell us, and how long economists say it will take to recover.
0:28.4	To figure out what to make of the moment we're in right now,
0:30.9	we have to go back to the beginning.
0:34.0	Back to March, shortly after the economy started shutting down.
0:37.6	We just got guys the number that we've been waiting for all morning, just moments ago.
0:42.3	The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits has hit a record high for a single week.
0:48.4	We're talking about a decade of job expansion that suddenly has come to a screeching halt.
0:54.0	That was March 26th.
0:55.8	At the time, over 3 million people had just filed for unemployment for the first time.
1:01.0	A record high.
1:02.4	We wanted to know more about what these historic unemployment numbers meant.
1:05.8	So we called up Catherine Ann Edwards.
1:08.4	My name is Catherine Ann Edwards, and I'm a PhD economist.
1:11.4	I specialize in labor, but you can just refer to me as Catherine.
1:14.9	Catherine is a labor economist at the Public Policy Think Tank, the RAN Corporation.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from theSkimm, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of theSkimm and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.