Almudena Sevilla, Sarah Smith
The economic recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic stands in stark contrast to previous recessions in that it has disproportionately impacted women s employment. Alon et al. (2020a) find that prior to 2020, recent recessions have either depressed men s employment more than women’s or had a roughly equal impact. On the contrary, in the 2020 recession, the female unemployment rose by 2.9 percentage points more than the male unemployment rate at its peak (Alon et al., 2020a), and even during the partial recovery period in recent months, the female unemployment rate is still significantly higher than the male unemployment rate.
By Don McIntosh
Union members’ share of the total workforce rose in 2020 for the first time in a decade, but not for the right reasons. Total union membership dropped 321,000, but that loss was dwarfed by the 9.6 million drop in overall employment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest annual report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Because much of that job loss was in non-union sectors like restaurants, the union share of the workforce grew.
In 2020, 10.8% of the workforce were members of unions, up from 10.3% in 2019. Union membership totaled 14.3 million workers, a drop of 2.2% from 2019.
Credit Eater
Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary December 2020 unemployment rate was 6 percent, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS), an agency within the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet (EWDC).
The preliminary December 2020 jobless rate was up 0.3 percentage points from November 2020 and up 1.7 percentage points from the 4.3 percent recorded for the state one year ago.
The U.S. seasonally adjusted jobless rate for December 2020 was 6.7 percent, unchanged from November 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Labor force statistics, including the unemployment rate, are based upon estimates from the Current Population Survey of households. The survey is designed to measure trends in the number of people working, and includes jobs in agriculture and individuals who are self-employed.
School and day care center restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic have presented enormous challenges to parents trying to juggle work with child-care responsibilities. Still, empirical evidence on the impact of pandemic-related child-care constraints on the labor market outcomes of working parents is somewhat mixed. Some studies suggest the pandemic had no additional impact on the labor supply of parents, while other studies show not only that it did but that the negative impact was disproportionately borne by working mothers.[ 1]
The largest impact has been on Black, single, and non-college-educated mothers, mirroring widening employment disparities in the broader labor market since March.