The US economy lost 140,000 jobs in December. All of them were held by women

[MondayYogurt]

Article here amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/08/economy/women-job-losses-pandemic/index.html

According to new data released Friday, employers cut 140,000 jobs in December, signaling that the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is backtracking. Digging deeper into the data also reveals a shocking gender gap: Women accounted for all the job losses, losing 156,000 jobs, while men gained 16,000.

Well according to Scottish government legal representatives in a court case today, women aren't oppressed because of their sex but because of their gender. Just identify as men and the problem will go away (according to gender ideologues anyway).

Pretty shocking statistics though.

I was just coming to post this. Shocking. After listening to female QC speaking on behalf of Scotgov earlier today imply that woman who don't 'identify' as women escape sex discrimination 😒 this statistic just makes that QC & Scotgov look like fools they are to peddle this nonsense.

I didn't fully read the posts 😁 and have just repeated your point! Grr, just so angry 😡

Absolutely shocking numbers.

That is horrifying. And so many women are the sole provider for families, it's yet more children in poverty.

@TheShadowyFeminist

I was just coming to post this. Shocking. After listening to female QC speaking on behalf of Scotgov earlier today imply that woman who don't 'identify' as women escape sex discrimination 😒 this statistic just makes that QC & Scotgov look like fools they are to peddle this nonsense.

Well if women identify as men to avoid discrimination then that would solve tge problem.

Afterall not 100% of women would lose their jobs. Some men would too. The fact that they were men of the womanly persuasion would merely be invisible and the stats would be more favourable....

That is absolutely staggering! I wonder if the same thing is happening in other countries?

@Molesmokes

That is absolutely staggering! I wonder if the same thing is happening in other countries?

I can tell you I 'came across' a preliminary list of people at my work who would be at risk of redundancy (that the men in management put together) and it comprised solely women, Half of whom had taken mat leave in last 5 years.

Hope you've kept that list....

Those figure are jaw-droppingly terrible.

And I too hope you've kept that list!

I'd be fascinated to see the equivalent figures for the UK, broken down by sex.

Awful, but sadly unsurprising. And stats don’t include women resigning.

A male colleague of mine (office role, currently wfh) with one 12yo DC with no additional needs and in private school (so would assume reasonable distance learning provision) mentioned this week that due to the latest lockdown his wife - whose employer required her to attend the workplace FT - had ‘had to’ resign. V much doubt he’d resign if it was the other way round.

The LSE published a report in October:

Generation COVID: Emerging Work and Education Inequalities
CEP COVID-19 ANALYSIS
Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin October 2020

cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepcovid-19-011.pdf

There is a summary here:

One in 10 young people lost their job during covid-19 pandemic
MON 26 OCT 2020
Professor Stephen Machin

Extracts

”The study found young workers to be twice as likely to have lost their jobs compared to older employees and that employment and earnings losses are more pronounced for women, the self-employed and those who grew up in a poor family.”

”The initial findings come from a survey of around 10,000 people taken during September and October 2020. Overall, 5.4% of people who took part in the research said they had lost their job, a further 7.3% reported that they were still in work, but working zero hours meaning 12.7% were workless. There was a higher rate of worklessness for those aged 16 to 25 (18.3%) than for those aged 26 to 65 (11.9%).”

”This research will feature on BBC One’s Panorama programme at 7.30pm tonight (Monday 26 October).”

Well worth reading the rest of this short summary for what it has to say about the impacts on children’s education and students as well as employment:

www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2020/j-October-20/One-in-10-young-people-lost-their-job-during-covid-19-pandemic

There is data on the ONS site for the UK:

Labour market overview, UK: December 2020
Estimates of employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other employment-related statistics for the UK.

The majority of data in this bulletin come from surveys of households and businesses. It is not possible to survey every household and business each month, so these statistics are estimates based on samples.

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/december2020

There is a data file linked and that would need to be analysed in the same way as the US data to find out if the same pattern occurred in the UK:

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/december2020/relateddata

Women accounted for all the job losses, losing 156,000 jobs, while men gained 16,000.

This is quite obviously wrong. What the report says is that overall, the net effect is that women lost a lot of jobs.

For example, from that report you linked to it shows that the number of women working in these sectors actually increased in December:-

construction . +5,000
manufacturing . +14,000
wholesale . +5,000
retail . +53,000
warehousing & transport . +25,000
professional services . +96,000
mining . +1,000
IT . +1,000

But in the areas where women lost jobs these outweighed the areas where they gained jobs. Women lost jobs in the following areas:-

financial services . -3,000
education and health . -9,000
leisure and hospitality . -282,000
other services . -21,000
government . -41,000

So, that is how the fall in jobs for women nets out to 156,000 as there has been a massive fall in jobs in the leisure and hospitality areas - both areas which are dominated by female workers, especially in the lower earning jobs.

The same figures for men were:-

construction . +46,000
manufacturing . +24,000
wholesale . +20,000
retail . +67,000
warehousing & transport . +22,000
professional services . +65,000
mining . +3,000
financial services . +15,000

and where men lost jobs was generally the same as women:-

education and health . -22,000
leisure and hospitality . -216,000
other services . -1,000
government . -4,000
IT . -2,000

So the big difference is that men gained more jobs than women in construction and manufacturing and fewer lost their jobs in leisure and government.

Drilling down into the figures a bit, the really big losses were in "Food services and drinking places" - so that's basically bars and restaurants.

With the falls in government jobs, that's down to local and state government - federal government jobs actually increased.

@CaraDuneRedux

I'd be fascinated to see the equivalent figures for the UK, broken down by sex.

The UK only does a three month summary - not monthly like the US. The latest figures are for the three months to Sept 2020. The figures up until December won't be released until March of this year.

So comparing the three months to September 2020 against the three months to June 2020 the total number employed in the UK fell by 541,000. This was made up of 151,000 full time and 390,000 part time jobs.

Just to give some of the highlights.

In agriculture, men gained 24k full time and 17k part time jobs and women gained 7k full time and 15k part time jobs.

In wholesale and retail men lost 70k full time and 30k part time jobs and women lost 10k full time and 22k part time jobs.

In manufacturing men lost 23k full time and 11k part time jobs and women lost 13k full time and 3k part time jobs.

Where men lost out the most compared to women was in construction with men losing 63k full time and 34k part time jobs whereas women increased full time jobs by 1k and lost 9k part time jobs.

There were areas where full time jobs were affected differently to part time jobs.

For example, in accommodation and food service men gained 29k full time jobs but lost 39k part time. Likewise, women gained 23k full time jobs but lost 56k part time jobs.

In admin services men gained 9k full time but lost 3k part time jobs and women gained 17k full time jobs but lost 43k.

In real estate it was the other way round. Men lost 14k full time jobs and gained 6k part time. Women lost 10k full time jobs and gained 8k part time jobs.

The areas where women really suffered compared to men were the following:-

Transport and warehousing - men gained 21k full time jobs and lost 14k part time jobs. Women actually lost 9k full time jobs as well as losing 19k part time jobs.

Health and social work men gained 5k full time and lost 13k part time jobs. Women lost 42k full time and 4k part time jobs

Arts, entertainment & recreation men gained 5k full time jobs but lost 16k part time jobs. Women lost 5k full time and 37k part time jobs

Where women did a lot better was in professional services. Men lost 2k full time and 2k part time jobs. Women gained 17k full time jobs and lost 2k part time jobs.

Just to reiterate these figures are comparing the three months to September 2020 with the previous three months to June 2020 - the UK haven't released more recent figures which are broken down to the same level by sex.

nickymanchester thank you so much for all that analysis!! ❤️

Thanks for the breakdown, Nicky. A lot to disentangle in terms of which sectors are hit, whether it's professional or non-professional, part time or full time, etc.