Pandemic's `silver lining' for the working mothers
Moms with young kids are leading hiring numbers
A larger share of American women is working for pay than at any point in history. According to a recent analysis, the surge has been led by an unexpected group: mothers of children under 5.
Though mothers in this group have always worked less than other women, their gains since the pandemic have been biggest. The analysis, by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, identifies a major reason: the newfound ability of certain mothers, especially those who are married with college degrees, to work remotely.
“What's happening with married, well-educated women with young kids is crazy,” said Lauren Bauer, a fellow at Brookings and an author, with Sarah Yu Wang, of the analysis. “These are women who see themselves as workers. They were on the upward trend before the pandemic and they bounced back and just kept going.”
Julia Keintz took a job leading analytics at Zillow two years ago, when her children were 6 months and 11. One of the reasons she wanted the job, she said, was that since the pandemic, Zillow has allowed employees to live where they want and work flexible schedules.
She lives outside San Francisco, where Zillow has an office, but she rarely goes in. When her youngest was a baby, she could avoid lugging breast milk pumping supplies to and from work. She saves 90 minutes a day by not commuting. She can give her older child an afterschool snack and drive him to sports practices and bar mitzvah preparations.
In previous jobs, she said, she felt that she had to figure out how to juggle work and parenting on her own, and that she might have to quit if she couldn't. “It always felt like a secret, like I was an exception,” Keintz said. “Zillow is the first company I worked for where flexibility is an outwardly stated thing.”
The share of women working in the United States increased rapidly starting in the 1970s, with the women's movement. For those ages 25 to 54, it surpassed 77% in the 1990s, when changes in welfare and the earnedincome tax credit pushed more women into work. But then it stalled, even as it continued increasing in peer countries. Economists have attributed this to the lack of family-friendly policies in the United States, like paid leave and subsidized child care. Also, employers increasingly expect round-the-clock availability, a challenge with children at home.
Labor force participation for all working-age adults, including mothers, increased in late 2019, just before the pandemic, when a combination of very low unemployment and certain state and local policies eased the path to finding a job.
Today, 77.7% of women 25 to 54 are employed, a new high, and proof that pandemic school and child care closures failed to erase decades of gains in women's employment. Larger shares of mothers of both preschool and school-age children are working now than just before the pandemic.
Several factors have brought more women into the workforce in recent months. There were temporary federal expansions of paid leave and child care subsidies during the pandemic, and some states and cities have made similar benefits permanent. A tight labor market has probably contributed, by making jobs more attractive, as has inflation, by making a higher income more essential. And cultural shifts that started pre-pandemic have continued — women are getting more education and having children later, and investing more of their time and identity in a career.
Yet a particularly influential change for parents, researchers say, has been remote work for people with office jobs, and more flexibility on when and where work gets done. These pandemic-driven changes are benefiting other groups too, like people with disabilities, who are also working at record levels.
Becca Cosani took a new job as a health insurance consultant when her oldest daughter, Emilia, now 3, was a baby. She called it a “scary move” because of the constant travel that consulting requires, with a baby and a husband whose business, engine rebuilding, can't be run from home.
“Women are working more because they have to,” she said.
Then the pandemic hit, and the travel never materialized, because clients were working remotely and decided it was more efficient. She works from her home office, in Missouri City, Texas.
On breaks, she does laundry or runs errands.