How has the pandemic affected the job market for women?
The attack of the Coronavirus outbreak will leave a long-lasting effect, and the job market will be affected for potentially years in this unrelenting downturn. During this pandemic, we jumped from the best labor market to the terrible in the last 60 years. Millions of jobs that are posted during the COVID-19 epidemic will never come back. Job loss is one of the most severe impacts of COVID-19 crises, while countries with lower economic growth will face long term effects economically in business environments.
An economist at Stanford Nicholas Bloom says,
“This is the biggest thing since the Great Depression. It’s absolutely enormous and incredibly fast,”
-Nick Bloom, Stanford economist
Impact of Pandemic on Women Related to the Job Market
The preliminary results showed that the rate of job loss as the most severe and instant impact of the pandemic. COVID-19 crisis affects men and women in many ways. For women, vulnerabilities in the home, on the front lines of the health department, and in the labor market must be addressed.
Women have lost their jobs at a drastic rate than men during the COVID-19 pandemic. Female workers account for the bulk weight of service-sector jobs, including personal care, food service, which are more at risk to social-distancing measures and have suffered the brunt of losses during the pandemic economic crisis. Married women as stay-at-home moms, in past recessions took jobs to offset lost wages, mainly when their husbands were laid off, may appear less likely to seek work.
How Women Are Getting Squeezed by the Pandemic Economically
The coronavirus has intensifying existing social and economic inequalities, especially for women. Both women and men are suffering from financial fallout due to this pandemic across the world. But the women already more likely to be in poverty than men financially. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, many women were already facing lower savings rates. In addition, they were earning a smaller paycheck, and end up being disproportionately squeezed.
Moreover, women appear to face more negative impacts as compared to men. There is a threat that gender gaps could expand during the pandemic. The World Bank Group is trying to ensure that projects responding to COVID-19 consider the pandemic’s different impacts on men and women.
COVID-19 Job Losses Impact Everyone, With Women Taking a Harder Hit Than Men
Almost 36.5 million people have unemployment claims in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of those, the week ending May 9 aw 2.2 million claims filed. Although the pandemic has impacted millions of Americans, the latest report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that women are disproportionately facing the brunt of these losses.
In April, women accounted for 55 percent of the 20.5 million jobs lost. The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), conducted a study recently. In it, the number of women who lost their jobs is higher than the 11.1 million jobs women gained between the end of Great Recession in July 2010 and emergence of the coronavirus crisis in February 2020.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a remarkable challenge for the labor market, and some sectors particularly for women. However, there is no doubt that the scale of the pandemic impact is incalculable. A recent study has shown that four in every ten women face an increased risk of lay-off.
