Speaker 1: It's Thursday, November twelve. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: When it comes to jobs, women have been hit hard
Speaker 1: by the coronavirus pandemic. More than two million women have
Speaker 1: dropped out of the labor force as of October, and
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons is that virtual schooling is
Speaker 1: causing moms to quit having to make tough decisions about
Speaker 1: paying for childcare or working. Many women with school age
Speaker 1: children are staying home. Heather Long, economics correspondent at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, joins us for how the pandemic has hit
Speaker 1: working women. Thanks for joining us, Heather, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to keep in on the progress with the
Speaker 1: economy throughout the coronavirus pandemic. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that we're seeing from the last bit of numbers, this
Speaker 1: is coming from October numbers, is that more than two
Speaker 1: million women had dropped out of the labor force as
Speaker 1: of October, and the percentage of women working is the
Speaker 1: lowest since nine And one of the big reasons they
Speaker 1: think is going on with this is because of the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of schools across the country and kids having to
Speaker 1: continue to learn at home and doing this online schooling,
Speaker 1: this pandemic recession. I love the term has been dubbed
Speaker 1: the she session because it's hurting men far worse in
Speaker 1: this respect, and as I mentioned, schooling is a big
Speaker 1: part of this. I think some of the numbers show
Speaker 1: that women with school age children definitely haven't returned back
Speaker 1: to the labor force. So, Heather, help us walk through
Speaker 1: some of these numbers and figure this all out. This
Speaker 1: was dubbed the she session, as you put it, over
Speaker 1: the summer, and initially that made sense. We just look
Speaker 1: around our own communities. We can see a lot of
Speaker 1: these restaurants emptying out, hotels, entertainment, hair salons, places that
Speaker 1: tended to employ more women and particularly women of color
Speaker 1: than men. And so it wasn't a huge surprise that
Speaker 1: we saw initially women get harder hit. But what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, what really piqued my interest is what happened
Speaker 1: then in September. We started to see this big divergence
Speaker 1: between men and women in September. And what happened is basically,
Speaker 1: as schools started up again and many of them were
Speaker 1: hybrid or virtual distance learning, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: it wasn't working for families, and the person who had
Speaker 1: to end up generally doing this was the mom. And
Speaker 1: so there, as you pointed out the fewest women working
Speaker 1: since nine we saw over eight hundred thousand women dropped
Speaker 1: out of the labor flour, so they stopped working or
Speaker 1: stopped looking for a job in September alone. And when
Speaker 1: October rolled around, sometimes you think, oh, is that just
Speaker 1: the fluke one month fluke. Nope, when October rolled around,
Speaker 1: men particularly dad to basically fully gained any of their
Speaker 1: losses from September, which were much much less steep. And
Speaker 1: when moms women are still very much struggling to get
Speaker 1: back to work and get back to jobs. And in
Speaker 1: particular what we're seeing is moms of elementary age kids,
Speaker 1: so ages six to twelve. Basically, it makes sense your
Speaker 1: kindergartener and first grader cannot do virtual learning on their
Speaker 1: own right. They need that constant supervision. And you spoke
Speaker 1: to a bunch of women on this particular thing, and
Speaker 1: they had a lot of tough decisions to make. You
Speaker 1: can pay for childcare, but in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: people were saying, well, it just doesn't outweigh the cost.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will probably make less going out and
Speaker 1: working and paying more for somebody to take care of
Speaker 1: the children rather than just doing it myself. And that
Speaker 1: was a lot of what you were hearing, and it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of an unemployed woman. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Courtney Allen in upstate New York. Substitute teacher lost her
Speaker 1: job like many in the spring, and she desperately needs
Speaker 1: the money these unemployment payments. She still receives them, but
Speaker 1: it's barely enough to cover her rent. And she's got
Speaker 1: a kindergartener in a for scrater, two young boys, one
Speaker 1: of whom has the a d D a d h D,
Speaker 1: which makes it even harder to sit there on a
Speaker 1: computer all day and learning. And you know, she said
Speaker 1: to me, I have no good options. I need the money.
Speaker 1: I need to go back to work, but who's going
Speaker 1: to watch my kids. My kids right now are in
Speaker 1: a program that is distance learning, and so it's a
Speaker 1: terrible situation to be in. And we're hearing that over
Speaker 1: and over again. She's a single mom, but it's also
Speaker 1: playing out in two parent families where it's often the
Speaker 1: mom who is ending up having to take a step back,
Speaker 1: scale back work, or scale back hours. And so what's
Speaker 1: happening now is a lot of people are hoping for
Speaker 1: more stimulus to be approved by Congress. So this money
Speaker 1: could either be used for child care services or just
Speaker 1: to continue supporting the families. And it's really important because
Speaker 1: women that take time off for childcare and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: historically it's harder for them to get back into the
Speaker 1: workforce after you've been out of it for some time.
Speaker 1: So that's another issue. And you know, we talk about
Speaker 1: the constant effects of the pandemic, and you know, men
Speaker 1: seem to take more of it. On the health side,
Speaker 1: they're getting sicker and more severe cases and dying in
Speaker 1: higher numbers. But on the economic side, it's harder for
Speaker 1: women to recover that way. It definitely is, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of good data on this from
Speaker 1: the past Great Recession and from the past really twenty years,
Speaker 1: and what we found over and over again is when
Speaker 1: women take a year off to watch children, it has
Speaker 1: severe repercussions for their career. It's it's not only harder
Speaker 1: to get back in, but they almost never earn as
Speaker 1: much money as they did before. They have lower social
Speaker 1: security lower retirement savings, so it just compounds for the
Speaker 1: rest of their life in a very negative way. So
Speaker 1: this is both a real pain for these families like
Speaker 1: Courtney Allens who are struggling financially right now, but it's
Speaker 1: also a detractor overall for the US economy. All Timately,
Speaker 1: our economy grows when we have more workers, and we've
Speaker 1: been trying to get more women into the workforce. The
Speaker 1: United States already before the pandemic, lag well behind countries
Speaker 1: like Canada, Germany, even Japan and how many women we
Speaker 1: have working, So we were already way behind. Now we're
Speaker 1: even further back. I mean, it's just one part of
Speaker 1: the larger equation, but it's a very critical one to
Speaker 1: get our American women working more and getting kids back
Speaker 1: to school. Obviously that's a big component as well. But
Speaker 1: you know, we're all waiting for vaccines, we're waiting for
Speaker 1: other therapeutics. It's going to take some time, but it
Speaker 1: is a critical part of that equation. Heather Long, economics
Speaker 1: correspondent at the Washington Post, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Romeros, and this has
Speaker 1: been reopening America. Don't forget different today's big news stories.
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