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116 Monthly Lab. Rev. 26 (1993)
Women and Jobs in Recessions: 1969-92

handle is hein.journals/month116 and id is 710 raw text is: Women and jobs in recessions: 1969-92 The probability of losing one's job because of a recession is very different for women and men, but in the last two recessions, gender differences were reduced William Goodman, Stephen Antczak, and Laura Freeman William Goodman, Stephen Antczak, and Laura Freeman are economists in the Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics. ome recent statements in the media reveal a belief that women lose jobs in recessions before men do, and in proportionately larger numbers.' These perceptions are not sup- ported by the facts. This article discusses employ- ment of women in recessions, and the sharp differ- ences between the latest recession and earlier ones. It is true that trends in women's employment during recessions are quite different from those for men, but men, not women, experience the bulk of net job loss, even though men and women now hold jobs in roughly equal numbers. In each of the last five recessions,2 men lost at least 9 times as many jobs as women did. This fact is primarily attributable to the distribution of male and female employees in the various industries and the degree of cyclical job loss in each industry during reces- sions. The goods-producing industries, which em- ploy large numbers of men, sustain the greatest job losses during downturns. Certain service-pro- ducing industries that employ primarily women actually continue to grow in recessions. During the latest (1990-91) recession, how- ever, the discrepancy between men and women was sharply reduced, reflecting in part the unusual and, in some cases, serious declines in certain ser- vice-producing industries. (See chart 1.) Employment: the facts The Current Employment Statistics survey of businesses (which estimates the number of U.S. payroll jobs) provides evidence that men experi- enced the bulk of job losses in all recessions since 1964, when complete employment estimates by sex were first produced.' In the first 3 of these 5 most recent recessions, the number of women on payrolls in fact rose (although, of course, indi- vidual women lost jobs), while the number of men losing jobs far exceeded the number hired. (See table 1.) In the last two recessions, women did lose jobs on a net basis, although men lost 9 to 19 times as many. (See table 1.) The unusual losses for women in the two recessions had quite dif- ferent causes. In the recession of 1981-82, women lost about 135,000 net jobs, largely re- flecting a decline of about 170,000 jobs held by women in government, as Federal aid to State and local governments was reduced; meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs held by women increased slightly. In the recession of the early 1990's, women lost about 125,000 net payroll jobs, with women's employment in government increasing while jobs held by women in the pri- vate sector decreased by approximately 145,000. The 1990's recession brought the greatest pri- vate-sector loss of jobs for women in more than 20 years, as several important service-producing industries were much weaker than in preceding downturns. The 1990-91 recession also was unusual in that a net decline in jobs continued for 11 months after the official March 1991 ending point of the recession. To fully understand the differing im- 26 Monthly Labor Review July 1993

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