THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC AND LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES FOR WOMEN OF COLOR

As protests continue across the country highlighting the differences in treatment for men and women of color including, but not limited to their treatment by police and our judicial system, we are all called upon to explore the causes of such unequal treatment and to consider what action we can take to make our institutions more just.

One area of unequal outcome for women of color that the current pandemic exacerbates is their pay and positions in the labor market. These differences have many causes, including differing access to education, to mentoring, to job opportunities and both explicit and implicit bias at all points of entry and progress in the labor market. As pointed out in Forbes, the recent job losses due to the shut downs associated with the pandemic have disproportionately fallen on women. Among women, the job losses have varied by race and ethnicity, with Black, Asian and Latina women all experiencing grater losses than white women. While the employment to population ratio from February to April fell by 9.6 percentage points for white women, it fell by 13.6 percentage points for Latina women, 11.0 percentage points for Black women, and 10.3 percentage points for Asian women.

More specifically, women of color are more highly represented in some of the industries that have experienced the highest levels of unemployment, such as childcare, hospitality, and retail sales. The National Women’s Law Center pulled together numbers from the American Community Survey, showing that 93 percent of workers in Child Care are women, and of these, 43 percent are women of color. When it comes to maids and housekeepers in travel accommodations, 89 percent of workers are women, and of these, 77 percent are women of color. For home health and personal care aides, 85 percent of workers are women, and of these 59 percent are women of color.

Not only are women of color experiencing a larger percentage of job losses, the pay gap continues to be the largest for women of color. While on average women working full time earn 82 cents for every dollar men earn, black women on average were paid 61 percent of what non-Hispanic white men were paid, and Latina women earned 54 percent of what non-Hispanic white men earned. These lower earnings mean that these individuals have less accumulated wealth to draw on to both help them in a time of crisis, such as now, to provide for their families and to provide for themselves in retirement.

Many women, especially women of color, are the sole source of income for their families. For households where both parents work, women provide a large percent of the household income. The impact of job loss coupled with lower earnings puts these women and their families in an even more precarious position. 

Both short term solutions, policies that take into account the disproportionate impact on women of color and their families during the current pandemic, as well as longer term structural changes that address why women of color earn less and are excluded from higher paying and more stable occupations with accommodating benefits, are essential to address these issues. It is also important that women of color be included among those involved in discussing and making such needed changes.