Steve Rattner: Pandemic Recession Is Hurting Mostly Women

EXCERPT:

RATTNER: “Now, you mentioned the she-cession, so let’s talk about what’s happening to women. If you start actually all the way on the left here, you can see, not surprisingly, that historically, men made up most of the labor force. 52% compared to the 48% if you go all the way back to 2000. In the 2008/2009 recession, that was a man recession. You can see that the share of jobs that went to men, the blue line, drops precipitously. The share going to women increased. And, in fact, for the first time in our history, women had more jobs than men coming out of the ‘08/’09 recession. Then we went back to a more traditional pattern. But all the way on the right, you can see what’s happened, literally, in just one month, which is far more women lost their jobs than men who lost their jobs. So the share of the labor force going to men has gone up. Why is that? That’s because this is a very different recession than the last one. The last one was mostly about manufacturing, construction, jobs predominantly done by men. This recession, a pandemic recession, is about, so far anyway, leisure, hospitality, education, and even in some parts of health care, women represent a majority of the labor force, so they are being hurt the worst this time around.”