Women are looking for jobs, but will they be able to find them?
Women are looking for jobs, but will they be able to find them?
New data this week offered some encouraging signs about women and the labor force. Researchers from the New York Federal Reserve found that the number of people seeking work increased between November and March, and the Fed says that increase was primarily driven by women entering the job market.
Women have borne the brunt of job losses caused by COVID-19 “largely because they were employed in industries that had the most work closures,” including hospitality, leisure, retail and social services, said Yana Rodgers at the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. “And these are precisely now the jobs that are rebounding.”
We still have millions of jobs to make up for, said labor economist Betsey Stevenson at the University of Michigan. She said many women looking for jobs might have trouble finding a job, especially if they can’t return to the industry they used to work in.
“The businesses might have shut down. The entire industry or sector may have shrunk,” Stevenson said.
She said this could be especially challenging for women in their 50s and 60s who lost their jobs during the pandemic and may have a harder time finding new ones.
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