How much of a setback has the COVID-19 pandemic been for American working women?
Although women who lost or left their jobs at the height of the crisis have largely returned to the job market, a recent study highlights the price many have paid for stepping back: in 2023, the wage gap between men and women working full time has widened. from year to year for the first time in 20 years, according to an annual report from the US Census Bureau.
Economists trying to make sense of the data say it captures a complicated moment in the job market’s disjointed recovery from the pandemic, when many women finally returned to work full time, particularly in low-wage sectors hard hit where they are over-represented like the hotel industry, social work and security.
The news isn’t all bad: Wages rose for all workers last year, but faster for men. And although the gender pay gap has widened, it is comparable to what it was in 2019 before the pandemic hit.
In 2023, women working full time earned 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, down from an all-time high of 84 cents in 2022. The Census Bureau called this the first statistically significant widening of the ratio since 2003.
This is a reversal from the previous five years, during which the ratio had declined – a trend that may be partly due to increases in women’s average median incomes, as many low-income women salary had been forced out of full-time employment.
SJ Glynn, chief economist at the Department of Labor, said it was too early to say whether 2023 was a failure or the start of a worrying new trend in the gender pay gap. But she said even a return to the pre-pandemic status quo is a reminder of how far behind women were to begin with and shows how the pandemic has slowed the march toward gender equality.
Latinas among the lowest paid
Hispanic women in particular illustrate the complexity of this period. They are the only demographic group of women whose wage gap narrowed slightly between 2022 and 2023 compared to white men working full time, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by both the National Women’s Law Center and the National Partnership for Women and Families, research. and advocacy groups. For black and Asian women, the pay gap has widened, and for white women, it has stayed the same.
Latinos have increasingly become a driving force in the U.S. economy, as they enter the workforce at a faster rate than non-Hispanic people. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of Latinas working full time increased by 5%, while the overall number of full-time working women remained the same.
Matthew Fienup, executive director of the Center for Economic Research & Forecasting at California Lutheran University, said he expects gains in wages, education levels and contributions to U.S. GDP ” continue for the foreseeable future. For all women, he noted that the pay gap between men and women has gradually narrowed since 1981, even if it has sometimes widened from one year to the next.
“It’s important not to overemphasize data from just one year,” he added.
Yet the pace of progress has been slow and has seen periods of stagnation.
Latinas remain among the lowest paid workers — with a median full-time wage of $43,880, compared to $50,470 for black women, $60,450 for white women and $75,950 for white men — so that their rapid entry into the full-time workforce in 2023 has contributed to slowing the median. wage gains for women overall, likely contributing to the widening of wages between men and women that year, according to Liana Fox, deputy chief of the Census Bureau’s division of social, economic and housing statistics.
And Latino workers have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic, suffering the highest unemployment rate, 20.1% in April 2020, of any major demographic group, according to a Labor Department report that examined the disproportionate toll of the pandemic on women.
Domestic workers, who are disproportionately immigrants, have particularly felt the effects. Many lost their jobs, including Ingrid Vaca, a Hispanic home health aide for the elderly in Falls Church, Virginia.
Vaca, originally from La Paz, Bolivia, contracted COVID-19 multiple times and was hospitalized for a week in 2020 because she had trouble breathing. She continued to test positive even after recovering, and was therefore unable to enter family homes or work for most of that year or the following year.
She had no money for food or rent. “It was very difficult,” she said, describing how she lost clients while she was away and still struggles to find stable, full-time employment.
A wider gap for part-time workers
The Census Bureau calculates the gender wage gap by comparing only men and women who work full-time, full-time. But a darker picture for women emerges from data that includes part-time workers, said Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.
Latinas, for example, receive just 51 cents for every dollar paid to white men by this measure, and their gender wage gap has widened from 52 cents per dollar in 2022, according to the organization’s report , which analyzed Census Bureau microdata.
Ariane Hegewisch, director of the Employment and Income Program at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said the slight narrowing of the wage gap for Latinas could be because their presence in higher-paying occupations is increased from 13.5% to 14.2% last year, according to an IWPR. analysis of federal labor data.
However, the share of Latinas in full-time, low-wage jobs also increased in 2023, she added.
The United States will continue to have a gender wage gap until the country addresses the structural problems that cause it, according to Seher Khawaja, director of economic justice at the national civil rights organization of women Legal Momentum.
“There are some underlying issues that we’re not really fixing,” Khawaja said.
For example, today’s economy relies heavily on women performing unpaid or underpaid care work for children and the elderly. “Until we accept that we need to give care work the value it deserves, women will continue to be left behind,” Khawaja said.
Lilly Ledbetter, icon of equal pay
Even though many Democrats and Republicans agree on the structural challenges facing women in the workforce, they have struggled to find common ground on policy solutions, including expanding paid family leave and providing protection to pregnant workers.
An ongoing battle centers around the Democratic-sponsored Paycheck Fairness Act, which would update the Equal Pay Act of 1963, including protecting workers from retaliation for discussing their pay, a practice that , advocates say, helps keep workers in the dark about pay discrimination.
Republicans generally opposed the bill, saying it was redundant and ripe for frivolous lawsuits. Vice President Kamala Harris, however, reiterated her support for the Democratic-sponsored bill on Monday after the death of one of its most prominent supporters, eLilly Ledbetter quality pay icon.
Pay inequity has ripple effects, Khawaja explained: “It’s not just women who suffer. It is their families, their children who suffer from the lack of adequate income and compensation. And this fuels intergenerational cycles of poverty and insecurity.
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