Employers cut 140,000 jobs in Dec., signaling that the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is backtracking. Digging deeper into the data also reveals a shocking gender gap: Women accounted for all the job losses, losing 156,000 jobs, while men gained 16,000. These are net numbers-- of course, many men lost their jobs in Dec., too - but when taken together as a group, they came out ahead, whereas women fell behind. Women started 2020 on roughly equal footing with men, with women holding 50.03% of jobs, but women are down 5.4 million jobs from Feb., before the pandemic began, as compared to 4.4 million job losses for men. Schools and day cares are still closing, and we know that's what's impacting women's ability to reenter the workforce and sustain jobs.
At 6abc.com
