The Economy Is Driving Women Out Of The Workforce And Some May Not Return

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🗓️ 19 October 2020

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Women are dropping out of the workforce in much higher numbers than men. Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute explains that women are overrepresented in jobs that have been hit hardest by the pandemic and child care has gotten harder to come by.

The situation is especially dire for Latina women, as NPR's Brianna Scott reports. Last month, out of 865,000 women who left the workforce, more than 300,000 were Latina.

Victoria de Francesco Soto of The University of Texas at Austin explains why it's not just the pandemic economy hurting women. Some may be left out of the recovery, too.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Layoffs, food stamps, a hurricane. This is not what Jennifer Staley had planned for 2020.
0:05.8	I'll be fine. It's fine. Everything's fine.
0:10.3	It's nothing's fine.
0:13.4	Staley lives in Southern Alabama. She works as a waiter at a restaurant in Gulf shores right on the beach.
0:19.4	Well, she used to work there anyway. I usually would make anywhere between
0:23.2	five and eight or nine hundred dollars a week.
0:28.2	It was enough to cover her expenses, rent, food, not just for her, but also for her two kids, a 15-year-old and her two-year-old son.
0:36.2	It was tight, but it worked. Then came COVID.
0:41.2	Staley became one of the more than 11 million American women who lost their jobs in the start of this pandemic.
0:47.2	Her restaurant reopened for a bit, then Hurricane Sally shut it down in September.
0:52.2	Now she's back to looking for work, work in a service industry that is still devastated.
0:57.2	Affordable child care is hard to come by, and the stalemate in Washington means there is no guarantee of any extra stimulus coming her way.
1:05.2	Jennifer Staley is stuck.
1:08.2	I really hate asking for help, but I don't have any food and I don't have any pull-ups for him,
1:16.2	and I just don't have anything.
1:19.2	One of my managers from work went to Piggly Wiggly and got me groceries,
1:25.2	and I ran around after the hurricane came through and picked up MREs,
1:31.2	and I'm going to hoard them for the next time I might not have money.
1:35.2	So I've gotten help, but I've had to really, I've had to beg for help and it sucks.
1:42.2	Consider this.
1:44.2	More women than men lost their jobs in this pandemic-era economy millions more.
1:49.2	What if the recovery ends up unequal too?
	...

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