Women have been hit hard by the coronavirus labor market: Their story is worse than industry-based data suggest
Key findings:
- The latest payroll employment data for March show that women were the hardest hit by initial job losses in the COVID-19 labor market; women represented 50.0% of payroll employment in February, but represented 58.8% of job losses in March.
- If women’s share of new unemployment insurance (UI) claims in recent weeks was driven solely by sector-level differences in gender composition, then they would have accounted for roughly 45% of new UI claims, or about 6.8 million new claims.
- However, relying solely on the gender composition of sectoral unemployment may lead to an underestimate of new UI claims that were filed by women. Using three states that provide direct estimates of the gender composition of new UI claims shows that the female share of these claims is substantially higher than what we estimate by using only the sectoral composition of employment by gender.
- We estimate that once the overrepresentation of women in sectors with new layoffs is corrected for, between 7.8 and 8.4 million women filed for unemployment insurance in the three weeks ending April 4.
Since March 15, 15.1 million workers in the United States have filed for unemployment insurance. Tomorrow, the latest initial unemployment insurance claims will be released by the Department of Labor for the week ending April 11, and estimates suggest that there could be another 4.5 million initial claims reported. These top-line numbers are vital for understanding what is going on in the economy and the extent of the economic insecurity millions of workers and their families are experiencing. But what is less clear is who these workers are and where they work. While national statistics that directly report the demographic characteristics of UI claimants will not be available for months, we use national employment data from March and preliminary state UI reports through April to begin to answer those questions. We find that job losses and furloughs have disproportionately affected women. This is the result of two factors: Women are more concentrated in sectors that experienced more job loss, and women also tended to see more job loss than men within these sectors.
New survey and report reveals mistreatment of H-2A farmworkers is common: The coronavirus puts them further at risk
The irony should be lost on no one that NPR’s reporting on the Trump administration’s push to lower wages for H-2A farmworkers came out the same week that a new report was published by Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) that calls into question whether the H-2A temporary work visa program should exist at all without major reforms to protect migrant workers.
The report details the findings of in-depth interviews with 100 H-2A workers, who “reported discrimination, sexual harassment, wage theft, and health and safety violations by their employers—and a chilling lack of recourse.” Every single H-2A worker “experienced at least one serious legal violation of their rights, and 94% experienced three or more.” And before they had even arrived in the United States, many were already heavily in debt as a result of paying illegal recruitment fees in exchange for the opportunity to work in a low-wage farm job.
The Trump administration has weakened crucial worker protections needed to combat the coronavirus: Agencies tasked with protecting workers have put them in danger
Key takeaways:
- The Department of Labor (DOL) issued a temporary rule that will exempt 96% of applicable firms from providing paid sick and paid family and medical leave to their staff. It could also exempt 9 million health care workers and 4.4 million first responders from receiving paid leave.
- DOL issued guidance that narrows the eligibility of workers to receive Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). For example, gig workers must be “forced to suspend operations” by a government quarantine in order to receive PUA benefits, rather than voluntarily quarantining themselves.
- The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued guidance that will jeopardize the health and safety of workers. The CDC now allows essential workers to continue to work even if they may have been exposed to the coronavirus—as long as they appear to be asymptomatic and the employer implements additional precautions.
- The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) advises that certain businesses are not required to investigate or record workplace-related coronavirus cases. Not only does this guidance make workers less safe, it will likely make the public health crisis worse as employers will not be required to record virus-related illness as officials work to track these cases.
In the last three weeks, an unprecedented 17 million workers applied for unemployment insurance (UI), while millions more risk their lives to provide essential services. To mitigate the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress has passed a series of bills aimed at providing relief and recovery measures. The Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFRCA) and the CARES Act included critical provisions to assist workers impacted by the pandemic; chief among those are an expansion of Unemployment Insurance (UI) and access to paid leave. However, rather than working to implement these relief and recovery bills efficiently and effectively, the Trump administration has instead looked for ways to narrow and weaken the worker protections included in the legislation.
Trump administration looking to cut the already low wages of H-2A migrant farmworkers while giving their bosses a multibillion-dollar bailout
Key takeaways:
- The Trump administration, which recently deemed farmworkers essential to the economy, is considering lowering the wages of the 205,000 migrant farmworkers employed in the United States through the H-2A temporary work visa program, according to published reports.
- H-2A wages are usually based on a mandated wage standard that varies by region—known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR)—aiming to prevent temporary migrant farmworkers from being underpaid according to local standards and to prevent downward pressure on the wages of farmworkers in the United States.
- Farmworkers in general are paid very low wages—in 2019 they earned $13.99 per hour, which is only three-fifths of what production and nonsupervisory workers outside of agriculture earned, and they earned less than what workers with lowest levels of education in the U.S. labor market earned.
- The national average AEWR wage, at $12.96 per hour, was lower than wages for any of these groups of workers, and many H-2A farmworkers earned far less in some of the biggest H-2A states.
- The Trump administration may try to lower the wages of H-2A farmworkers through the regulatory process or a provision attached to a broader piece of legislation.
- This comes at a time when farm owners looking to cut their workers’ wages are on the verge of receiving a federal bailout worth at least $16 billion, which will help cover potential financial losses related to impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Last week, NPR reported that “new White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms.” Apparently, the Trump administration believes that temporary migrant farmworkers—who earned between $11.01 and $15.03 per hour in 2019—are overpaid.
Why should migrant farmworkers have to take a pay cut, especially right now, when farmers and ranchers are about to receive at least $16 billion in direct payments thanks to a federal bailout?
The coronavirus will explode achievement gaps in education
This blog post was originally posted on shelterforce.org.
The COVID-19 pandemic will take existing academic achievement differences between middle-class and low-income students and explode them.
The academic achievement gap has bedeviled educators for years. In math and reading, children of college-educated parents score on average at about the 60th percentile, while children whose parents have only a high school diploma score, on average, at the 35th percentile.* The academic advantages of children whose parents have master’s degrees and beyond are even greater.
To a significant extent, this is a neighborhood issue—schools are more segregated today than at any time in the last 50 years, mostly because the neighborhoods in which they are located are so segregated. Schools with concentrated populations of children affected by serious socioeconomic problems are able to devote less time and attention to academic instruction.
In 2001 we adopted the “No Child Left Behind Act,” assuming that these disparities mostly stemmed from schools’ failure to take seriously a responsibility to educate African American, Hispanic, and lower-income students. Supporters claimed that holding educators accountable for test results would soon eliminate the achievement gap. Promoted by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, the theory was ludicrous, and the law failed to fulfill its promise. The achievement gap mostly results from social-class based advantages that some children bring to school and that others lack, as well as disadvantages stemming from racial discrimination that only some children have to face.
The coronavirus, unfortunately, will only exacerbate the effects of these advantages.
Congress should immediately pass legislation protecting workers’ safety during the coronavirus pandemic
Key takeaways:
- Working people should not have to wait for a fourth recovery bill for vital, lifesaving protections, while corporations have received $450 billion in aid with no strings attached.
- The federal government should take on the role of “payroll of last resort,” as some other nations have done, in order to keep working people on the payroll with access to health care.
- The “phase four” recovery bill should contain enhanced protections for all workers performing essential work during this crisis, such as providing personal protective equipment, hazard pay, whistleblower protections, and bolstered collective bargaining rights.
Since March 8, Congress has passed three bills allocating trillions of dollars to relief and recovery measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These bills included some important provisions for workers hurt by the pandemic. Chief among those are funding for expanded unemployment insurance, increased access to paid sick leave for some workers, and funding for the airline industry to keep paying workers and covering their benefits. However, direct aid to workers was a small percentage of the overall funding in these relief and recovery measures. Much of the money included in these bills went directly to corporate interests. For example, the CARES Act included $450 billion in aid to impacted firms with virtually no strings attached. Instead of requiring firms receiving this bailout money to maintain pre-pandemic payroll levels, wages, and benefits, the language in the bill requires that such worker protections be provided “to the greatest extent practicable.” This is toothless language that does not require employers to use this taxpayer money to keep workers employed.
The airline industry relief funding was the only example of financial assistance with a serious string attached—requiring relief funds to be used explicitly for the “continuation of payment of employee wages, salaries, and benefits.” However, the Trump administration seems to be playing politics with the implementation of this program. It is unfortunate if not unpredictable that the sole program that provided a subsidy for workers’ wages and benefits is now the source of a political battle that jeopardizes its efficacy.
A comprehensive U.S. manufacturing policy is needed now more than ever
Twelve years ago, we warned that:
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- The increasing dependence of U.S. defense systems on foreign suppliers is alarming, especially, it might be argued, in a post-September 11 world…What happens when supply routes, for example, anywhere across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, are disrupted?
These warnings could not be more relevant today as we experience devastating disruptions in our supply chains across virtually every industry sector due to the growing COVID-19 crisis. Essential medical supplies are impacted as we struggle to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. commercial industrial base is particularly threatened by excessive reliance on outsourcing without regard to possible downsides. Aerospace, which contributes heavily to gross domestic product (GDP) with almost 500,000 U.S. jobs, has been outsourcing production for many years to repeated protests from the Machinists Union, among others. Fifty years ago, U.S. commercial airplanes were mostly produced in the U.S. Now, a much larger percentage of aircraft is outsourced—with an estimated 70% of the Boeing 787 production being outsourced.
Of course, it is not just aerospace and related products that are outsourced. The U.S. shipbuilding and repair industry has declined dramatically, along with other fundamental industries like machine tools. We are now more dependent on other countries for these items—along with countless others—than ever before.
Do Black economists matter?: The media erasure of Black economic voices hurts the communities hardest hit by the pandemic and society at large
The voices of Black economists have been largely absent from the recent media coronavirus coverage. Over the past month, for example, The New York Times, which has become one of the primary sources for economic insights about the pandemic, published 29 articles between opinion editorials and The Upshot mentioning the words “economist” and “coronavirus” between March 9 and April 9. Out of the 29 articles listed, just one was authored by a Black journalist, and only three addressed the racial inequities with respect to COVID-19. Given the high demand for economists’ insights, between the opinion page and The Upshot, 42 economists were either cited or co-authoring a piece. Among the 42, not a single Black economist was cited or was a contributor to an article despite the fact that some are addressing mobile payments to workers, solutions to the widening racial-wealth gap, and the pandemic’s impact on marginalized communities.
Black economists have long been ignored by the economics profession and media. Sadie T.M. Alexander, the first African American economist, could not practice after she earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921 because of racism and sexism. And recently, the American Economic Association began addressing its race problem beginning with a professional climate survey that showed a 56-percentage-point-difference between Blacks and non-Blacks with respect to feeling that race was respected in the profession and nearly half of Black respondents cited that they felt discriminated against because of race. One respondent went so far as to share that they would not recommend their Black children go into economics and that they made a mistake in choosing the field.
This is not the first crisis in which Black economists have been ignored by their colleagues and the media. Before the 2008 financial downturn, Black communities were experiencing early signs of waning unemployment and housing market devastation with respect to subprime loans and predatory lenders. William Spriggs, an economist at Howard University, told Quartz that underrepresented minority economists noticed these trends early on but their notes of alarm were barely amplified and were, quite frankly, ignored. Janet Yellen, former Chair of the Federal Reserve Board has since gone on record to recognize how the lack of diversity at the Board contributed to the severity of the crisis and the ineffectual nature of responses to it. The problem hasn’t gotten better, however. The Federal Reserve Board has hired only one Black woman out of its team of 406 economists, which is why there was a slew of coverage about its lack of diversity in 2019.
Relief efforts need to do more to protect older workers in a coronavirus economic shutdown
Key takeaways:
- The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law last month, and earlier policy responses to the pandemic are steps in the right direction but don’t do enough to protect workers, including older workers, who are at much greater risk from COVID-19.
- Older workers who lose their jobs face harsh consequences. They have less time to make up for lost earnings and savings before retirement. Many have trouble being hired and retire before they’re ready. They’re often forced to accept large pay cuts because some skills and knowledge they’ve built up aren’t transferable and may be undervalued by prospective employers.
- While older workers are less likely to work in the hard-hit leisure and hospitality industries, many are employed in other sectors and occupations that could see large job losses, including public-sector occupations.
- Expanding access to paid sick and family leave is critical to the safety and well-being of older workers and their families, as are stronger health and safety protections for workers.
- The CARES Act makes some necessary changes to paid leave and unemployment insurance programs, but these reforms need to be made permanent or automatically extended as long as economic conditions warrant.
- Older workers with inadequate health and safety protections who stop working because they’re at higher risk of serious consequences from COVID-19 should be eligible for paid leave and unemployment benefits.
- Work-sharing programs that encourage employers to reduce hours rather than resort to layoffs would especially help older workers.
(This is part one of a two-part series of posts on the impact of the coronavirus on older workers and what needs to be done to mitigate the economic shock to this group.)
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law last month, and earlier policy responses to the pandemic are steps in the right direction but don’t do enough to protect workers, including older workers, who are at much greater risk from COVID-19.
Older workers ages 65 and older, though not those ages 55–64, are less likely to be able to work from home than most other workers; only workers ages 15–24 are less able to telecommute. These older workers—many of whom are on the front lines—are at much higher risk of dying or suffering serious consequences from COVID-19 than their younger counterparts.
Personal care aides are among the low-paid and high-risk occupations with a disproportionate share of older workers (personal care aides are also overwhelmingly women and disproportionately people of color and immigrants). Older workers are also somewhat more likely than their younger counterparts to be employed in hospitals and nursing homes. (Unless otherwise noted, all references to older workers’ employment shares are based on the author’s analysis of 2015–2017 American Community Survey microdata for workers ages 55–64.)
The federal response to the pandemic has so far done little to protect the health of older workers and others facing greater risk from exposure to the virus, who are faced with a daily choice between risking their lives and losing their livelihoods. Low-paid workers in particular are not only less able to work from home, they’re also more likely to rely on public transportation and share close living quarters, heightening the risk of contagion for themselves and their families.
The next coronavirus relief package must include funding to safeguard our democracy: Voting by mail and online voting must be considered
An essential component of any “phase four” coronavirus relief and recovery package must be additional investments to protect our right to vote. Lawmakers must act now to establish safe, alternative voting methods—like vote-by-mail and online voting—especially before November’s general election.
The CARES Act included $400 million in “election security grants” to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus domestically for the 2020 federal election cycle. This is far less than fair election advocates argued was necessary to protect our elections during the pandemic. The Brennan Center for Justice, for example, released a plan calling for a $2 billion investment to ensure that the 2020 election is free, fair, accessible, and secure.
As more states explore alternative ways of casting ballots, Congress must provide resources responsive to the magnitude of the challenge. A failure to provide sufficient investments to safeguard elections is the most successful effort at voter suppression and disenfranchisement since the expansion of the franchise. We must demand investment in our democracy infrastructure and more voting options.