Women finding jobs vanish
Industries that employ majority women hit hardest by pandemic shutdown measures
Desiree Kelleigh worked at a highly technical job at the same company for six years, had a master’s degree, and 25 years of prior experience co-owning a successful restaurant with her now-deceased husband.
All of that experience didn’t protect her from the ruthless job cuts millions of Americans faced in March 2020.
“I had the rug pulled out from underneath me and I was let go,” Kelleigh said. “It just destroyed me. And I am still not completely over it. It really hurt me. It came as a complete shock at the very worst time in the business and in world history.”
Kelleigh is one of hundreds of thousands of women across the country who have been laid off
or had to step away from work to take care of children at a disproportionately higher rate than men during the pandemic. Unlike the Great Recession, which laid off more men than women, the pandemic shuttered industries in which women make up the majority of workers: education, hospitality, medical care, and retail, to name a few.
“Four times as many women (across the country) dropped out of the workforce as men,” said Crickett Thomas-o’dell, the Capital Region regional director of the Workforce Development Institute. Thomas- O’dell said she wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers were even higher, noting that sometimes information about a woman leaving a job isn’t recorded or sent up to the Department of Labor.
In the Albany schenectady-troy region, health care workers, office and administrative workers, and personal care and services jobs are the three industries with the highest percentages of female workers, according to data compiled by the Workforce Development Institute.
Unemployment for personal care and services jobs is estimated to have more than quadrupled from October 2019 to October 2020. For health care workers, unemployment nearly tripled between the same time period, according to the same data from the institute.
On top of that, schools’ pivot to remote learning and child care facilities being closed due to COVID -19 restrictions has forced more women than men to leave their work in order to handle the responsibilities at home. “Historically, stereotypically, and now pragmatically a lot of that (child care) burden has fallen to women and female heads of households,” said Matthew Crayne, a professor at University of Albany’s School of Business. “I imagine it is quite difficult for professional women to engage in a new venture when they have that responsibility.”
Across the country, when unemployment was at its peak in April, 15.5 percent of women were unemployed, while only 13.9 percent of men were, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But those numbers don’t capture women who have stepped away from work and are not currently “looking for work,” a qualification of being unemployed.
“While the changes from February to December (in unemployment) look not out of the range of the Great Recession, which was the deepest recession since the Great Depression … the in-between dropped twice that (in April),” said Erica Groshen, an economist at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “Most numbers ballpark that we are about halfway back.”
Re-entering the workforce now
Kelleigh didn’t miss a beat when it came to getting back into the workforce. She estimates she applied to 10 jobs a week for five months and kept hearing back the same answers: "No," and, "You are overqualified." She even tried reinventing herself by researching the insurance industry and teaching herself new skills.
“I was told I probably wouldn’t be a good fit for the job because it was temporary and they were looking for somebody who was looking for that job for a more permanent life long career,” Kelleigh said. “And I said how do you know it’s temporary? I am willing to work.”
For the first time in her life, Kelleigh had to go on unemployment, and had to change the lifestyle she had worked her whole life to have. “There’s so much more to having a job than the paycheck,” Kelleigh said. “For me, it’s being part of a community, it’s contributing, it’s enjoying your teams, making a difference. It really rocked my world to so quickly have no value in the same community I was born and raised in, or so it felt like.”
In September, she was hired at Lotus Analytics in Warrensburg.
Economists warn even a small break in work can set women backward when they try to land a job again. “Typically it is harder for a woman to come back, nearly impossible for a woman to come back to where she left off, same salary, same position, etc.,” Thomas- O’dell said.
“They might try to come back and employers might not be willing to hire them because they fear they have lost their skills or motivations,” Groshen said. “That can be problematic for labor force participation going forward.”
“Just the fact of getting laid off, or having to leave your job and go through that process can be incredibly discouraging,” Crayne said. “And the longer you remain out of work the less likely you are to feel like you can find work in the future, which leads people to really just disengage from the process.”
Finding compromise
Alysha Bigelow had worked in the hospitality industry for her whole career. She was working at a large conference hotel when she was laid off in March. She gave birth to her first child in June. “The plan was always to return to work in the fall,” Bigelow said. I had day care set up and everything ready for me to go back,” Bigelow said. “But with the hospitality industry, like many others, really shut down overnight it didn’t make sense to.”
The hotel she had previously worked for didn’t have a full-time position, so instead she found a part-time job at a catering company doing similar sales work. A big part of her and her partners' decision was saving on child care expenses, as well as staying safe by limiting potential exposure to COVID -19 that a child care facility may have brought.
“I’ve always worked a lot, my whole life, I’m very career orientated,” Bigelow said. “If you had asked really anyone in my life if I would be a stay-at-home mother, I don’t think anyone would say they saw me doing that. It’s not something I ever pictured but I am very lucky to still continue to work and be with my daughter.”
Bigelow is happy with the compromise she and her family have found, but says it is still a challenge trying to balance being a good mom and a good employee. “It has totally transformed how I’ve viewed work-life balance. I had always worked over 40-hour work weeks and work has always been my life,” Bigelow said. “I now see how you can still be a great employee and do great work, and still be around for your family.”
Many women are successfully balancing working from home and raising children right now, said Miriam Dushane, managing partner of Alaant Workforce Solutions. “But women might just personally say I can’t take on any more from a career advancement perspective because they are balancing so much, which could eventually affect their career and their development and growth in their profession overall.”
Uncertainty returning
Caitlin Kempf-lawrence worked for New York state Department of Taxation and Finance when she was sent home last March to work from home. She knew she was going to be having a baby in September but planned to return to work after her three-month maternity leave was up. Things have changed since then. Kempf-lawrence and her husband recently decided it will be best for her to stay home to limit exposure to the family, which includes her husband's parents who live next door and are both at high-risk for severe illness from novel coronavirus.
“It’s kind of sad but at the same time it is what is best for everyone involved,” Kempf-lawrence said. “I’ve been working since I was 12 and this is the first time I’m looking off into the abyss of not making money, but my husband has a good job so we are financially secure.”
Kempf-lawrence is working on a master’s degree in public health and will be looking for a public health job once the pandemic ends. She hopes to work for the state again, but worries any upcoming layoffs could mean a lack of spots for her.
Economists also warn that a year or two out of work during the pandemic will impact women's choices about coming back to the workforce or not.
Women might be scared by being on the sidelines for a while, Groshen said. Many women "who were just sort of hastened into leaving the workforce, they might have done it anyway, but more of them did and stayed out longer and then never bother coming back.”
“It has taken women a long time to get to where we are when it comes to having some type of equity in the workforce,” Thomas-o’dell said. “Leaving the workforce now hurts us in so many ways. It is going to take a while to get back to where we were. It is not going to happen overnight.”