The Institute for Women's Policy Research released a comprehensive, 67-page
Briefing Paper, entitledWomen and Men's Employment and Unemployment in
the Great Recession. Based on analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
and the Census Bureau, the Briefing Paper finds many families are relying on women's
earnings when men are unemployed and that unemployed men and women are
experiencing an average of 29 weeks of unemployment before finding a new job.
The Briefing Paper, authored by Heidi Hartmann, Ph.D., Ashley English, and
Jeffrey Hayes, Ph.D., researchers at IWPR, is available on the IWPR website here: www.iwpr.org/pdf/C373womeninrecession.pdf.
From the Executive Summary:
Since December 2007, the U.S. economy has been in the worst recession since the Great Depressionof the 1930s. Because much of the slowdown has occurred
in traditionally male fields such as manufacturing and construction, while a few
traditionally female fields such as health and education have shown job growth or
minimal job loss, many reports have focused on the job losses among men in the
labor force. At the same time the substantial job losses that have also occurred
among women in such sectors as retail, hospitality, and personal and business
services are rarely discussed. The number of unemployed women is now 6.3 million
(as of December 2009), an increase of 2.8 million unemployed women since the
recession began, a number larger than men's increased unemployment in most
previous recessions. Once they lose their jobs, women and men spend a similar
number of weeks unemployed; in December 2009, unemployed women and men
had been out of work for an astounding 29 weeks, on average. Moreover, a smaller
share of unemployed women collect unemployment insurance benefits compared
with unemployed men. Between December 2007 and November 2009, 36.8 percent
of unemployed women received unemployment benefits, on average, compared with
40.3 percent of unemployed men.
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