Healing but Hurting: Women Faring Worse in an Ailing Labor Market

Half a year after the U.S. job market began to crater from the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, the recovery is far from complete. The key takeaways from my deep dive:

• Despite record monthly job growth this spring and summer, we have recovered only half of the lost jobs lost during the frenetic initial weeks of the pandemic.
• The jobs recovery is stalling as “temporary” furloughs convert into permanent job losses, hiring slows, new claims for unemployment remains stubbornly high, and more layoffs loom.
• Unlike recent economic downturns, this pandemic recession is hurting women more than men, with relatively more women suffering job losses or otherwise exiting the labor force.
• Together the gathering headwinds suggest that the recovery will slow further or even reverse absent another round of robust stimulus. Accordingly, a full jobs recovery will take at least until early 2022 and likely longer.

The COVID-19 Recession is unprecedented in so many ways: the ferocity and speed of the downturn, the strength of the initial recovery, the disruptions to our normal lives. To these overall impacts, add the greater impacts on women, the opposite of the typical pattern in a recession. Relatively more women have lost their jobs because this recession, unusually, has hit services jobs harder than good-producing jobs. And more women are dropping out of the labor force altogether to care for their children as schools and day-care remain shuttered in much of the country.

It has become abundantly clear that our nation cannot fully heal, and the economy cannot get back to pre-pandemic levels, until it is safe for people to work, shop, socialize, and recreate as they did before. Much of the nation’s productive capacity will remain idle or underutilized until we have effective COVID-19 treatments and/or vaccines.

Even if the extraordinary August job gains were maintained going forward—which would be highly improbable given the slowing job growth and gathering headwinds I discussed here—we wouldn’t regain all the lost jobs until early 2022. Most likely, it will take considerably longer. In the meantime, women will bear a disproportionate share of the economic pain.

Read my six-month scorecard report for the U.S. labor market.