COVID-19 and Recovery Response
As the pandemic enters its third year and the nation turns to recovery, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research is committed to amplifying and addressing the challenges women face. IWPR’s new research provides insights and recommendations for policymakers to help meet the urgent and long-term needs of women, their families, and their communities.
Modest Job Gains for Women Signal Slow Recovery—with Child Care and School Re-Openings as Major Barriers to Full Return to Work
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 4, 2021 Contact: Erin Weber | weber@iwpr.org | (646) 719-7021 This month’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that more women returned to the workforce than men, and women gained employment. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research analysis of BLS data shows a return to modest growth, with 314,000 new jobs on payroll for women (56.2% of 559,000 total). Women’s jobs on payroll are still 4.2 million below pre-COVID-19 level, compared with 3.5 million fewer [...]
Women Who Lost Jobs in Pandemic May Wait Years to Work Again
By Francesca Chambers Women who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic could be waiting until 2023 to work again, experts warn, even if economic initiatives President Joe Biden has proposed become law. It could take more than two years for women’s employment to return to pre-pandemic levels because the industries women worked in were hit the hardest, according to the National Women’s Law Center, an organization that publishes monthly reports on how the pandemic is affecting women’s employment. Most [...]
Economic Recovery Could Take Years for Women Who Lost Jobs During Pandemic — Even with Biden’s Plans
By Francesca Chambers Women who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic could be waiting until 2023 to work again, experts warn, even if economic initiatives President Joe Biden has proposed become law. It could take more than two years for women’s employment to return to pre-pandemic levels because the industries women worked in were hit the hardest, according to the National Women’s Law Center, an organization that publishes monthly reports on how the pandemic is affecting women’s employment. Most [...]
How to Cure the She-Cession: 15 Moves to Help Working Women Recover
By Kerri Anne Renzulli More than 4.5 million fewer women are working now than at the start of the pandemic, setting women's participation rate in the workforce back more than 30 years. A combination of layoffs, particularly in female-dominated fields hit hard by COVID like tourism and hospitality, and a lack of child care resulting from school and daycare closures are to blame. But a "return to normal" won't by itself repair the economic damage to women and the goal [...]
Exclusive: Pandemic Could Cost Typical American Woman Nearly $600,000 in Lifetime Income
By Emily Peck New signs of the nation's expanding recovery from the pandemic crop up every day, but for millions of women in the U.S. the economic punch of COVID may never be over. Long after the face masks have been tucked away and the kids are back in school full-time, after offices reopen, jobs are regained and life returns to some semblance of normalcy, the financial fallout of the past 15 months will continue to trail these women—likely, for [...]
A Woman’s Struggle to Overcome Long-Term Unemployment
By Mitchell Hartman The Labor Department’s jobs report for April found that more than 4 of every 10 (43%) unemployed Americans were “long-term unemployed,” meaning they had been out of work and actively looking for 27 weeks or longer. That rate is comparable to the high levels seen in the years after the Great Recession. Women are bearing substantial burdens from both long-term unemployment and the struggle to return to the workforce after being laid off or leaving their jobs [...]
