Women's Experience in the Labor Market: Pandemic Reflections

With the April 2022 Employment Situation Report available, we now have two full years of employment data to reflect on women's experiences in the labor market during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw unprecedented rates of unemployment caused by pandemic precautions and resulting economic closures, federal and state expansion of unemployment insurance, student loan forbearance, stimulus payments, and child tax credits, as well as school closures and remote learning that present labor market challenges for working parents. These economic shocks and stressors affected workers differently, but in the aggregate, women, and particularly women of color, have seen their attachment to the labor force change significantly. In the beginning of the pandemic, women accounted for a higher proportion of jobs lost and experienced higher unemployment rates than did their male counterparts, according to statistics from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in the April 2020 Employment Situation Report. This differed from prior recessions, when men experienced higher unemployment rates, and led to a new term in our economic lexicon— the "shecession." Women in general were hit harder than men by the initial economic shocks the pandemic brought, but women of color experienced even higher rates of unemployment. In April 2020, the unemployment rate for Black women was 15.8 percent and for Hispanic women, it was 19.8 percent, both higher rates than that for White women—14.6 percent— and for all women—15.1 percent.