Women Ousted From the Labor Force:

What Next?

Presentation to National Press Foundation

March 31, 2021

Melissa Boteach, Vice President, Income Security and Child Care/Early

Learning, National Women’s Law Center
By the Numbers: A year in Review
Women’s Labor Force Participation:
• Women’s labor force participation rate was 57.0% last month, compared
to 59.2% in February 2020.
• Before the pandemic, women’s labor force participation rate had
not been this low since 1988.
• The net number of women who have left the labor force since the start of
the pandemic remains at over 2.3 million.
• Over the course of 2020, nearly 2.1 million women were pushed out of
the labor force, including 564,000 Black women and 317,000 Latinas

Women’s unemployment:
• The economy added 379,000 net jobs in February, with women
accounting for 64.6% of net job gain
• But unemployment rate for women ages 20 and over was still almost
twice as high as the 3.1% unemployment rate for women in the
same age group in February 2020
• Among adult women ages 20 and over who were unemployed last
month, 2 in 5 (41.0%) had been out of work for 6 months or longer.
Women of color, young women and women with
disabilities have been hit especially hard
Key factor: collapse of care infrastructure
• 1 in 6 child care jobs has been lost since the start of the
pandemic

• In August 2020, the Census Bureau found, “around one in five

(19.6%) of working-age adults said the reason they were not
working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare
arrangements. Of those not working, “women ages 25–44 are
almost three times as likely as men to not be working due to
childcare demands”

• A December study by the Chamber of Commerce Foundation

found, “approximately 32% of employers said they had
already seen employees leave since the pandemic, and half
of those cited childcare as the reason”
The workforce behind the workforce

Source: NWLC calculations based on 2019 CPS ASEC, using IPUMS. In the CPS, respondents self-identify their sex,
race, disability status, whether they are Latinx, and whether they were born outside the U.S.
The Cost of Inaction
There is no recovery from the shecession without investments in care:

The risk of mothers leaving the labor force or reducing work hours in order to assume
caretaking responsibilities could amount to more than $64.5 billion per year in lost
wages and economic activity and an additional possible loss of $12.2 billion in tax
revenue

Source: Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress

Long-term economic scars:

The staggering drop in women’s labor force participation not only undermines
women’s economic security today—but also will carry long-term scarring effects as
wage losses compound over time and ultimately result in less savings and smaller
income from Social Security in retirement .

Forthcoming research from NWLC anad Columbia University will quantify how much
more women’s lifetime earnings and retirement security would be if we had high-
quality, affordable child care for all.
What’s in the American Rescue Plan for Child Care
The ARP includes nearly $39 billion in relief for the child care sector:

• nearly $15 billion for expanded child care assistance through the Child Care and
Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to support families and providers, including
supporting the child care needs of essential workers. States have until the end of
September 2023 to obligate these funds
• A $600 million annual increase in mandatory child care dollars
• Nearly $24 billion creates a stabilization fund for eligible child care providers,
which will support providers who are currently operating or are closed for
COVID-related reasons, and help rebuild supply

What will it be used for?

• Personnel costs
• Rent and facility maintenance and improvements
• personal protective equipment (PPE) and COVID-related supplies, goods and
services needed to resume providing care,
• mental health supports for children and early educators, and
• reimbursement of costs associated with the current public health emergency.

Summary from Center for Law and Social Policy

Moving forward, an equitable
economic recovery plan must:
• Ensure that every low-and middle-income family has access to affordable, high
quality child care options, modeled on the Child Care for Working Families Act, which
would create at least 2.3 million good jobs in the child care and early education
sector and through the increase in maternal/parental employment.
• Treat caregivers and early childhood educators with respect and dignity for their
valuable and complex work, pay them living wages, benefits, and ensure parity with
elementary school teachers; provide professional development and career ladders to
higher-paying early care and education jobs; a voice in the system; the choice to join
a union and bargain collectively, and other fundamental work-related rights and
protections.
• Provide equitable access to preschool in a model that is inclusive of centers, schools,
community-based organizations, Head Start, Early Head Start and family child care
homes, and supports a strong, just birth to age 5 system.
• Support safe, energy-efficient, developmentally appropriate child care facilities,
especially in child care deserts, and home-based options in all neighborhoods.
Resources for you
• Issue brief on need for direct child care
spending
• Federal policy recommendations for
making child care a priority
• State policy recommendations around child
care
• NWLC monthly jobs reports analysis,
including February 2021
• Issue brief on loss of child care jobs during
COVID