Womenstake

Unemployment Among Single Mothers, Women of Color at Highest Level Since Recession Began

by Jasmine Tucker, Fellow,
National Women's Law Center

Stories about the July jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics generally noted that the unemployment rate stayed at 9.5 percent (slightly up for all women, slightly down for all men), 131,000 jobs were lost, and 14.6 million Americans, about the same number as in June, were unemployed. That news is grim enough—but when we went deeper into the data, we found even more alarming trends for women.

Unemployment for women who head families shot up to 13.4 percent in July from 12.1 percent in June. This marks the highest unemployment rate for this particularly vulnerable group since the recession began in December 2007 and the highest rate in over 25 years.

Unemployment among African-American women jumped from 11.8 percent in June to 12.9 percent in July. The situation was similar for Hispanic women, whose unemployment rate increased by 1.1 percentage points to 12.1 percent in July, marking this group's highest unemployment rate since 1986.

Catching Up With Single Mothers

by Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center

In today's NY Times Bob Herbert highlights the increasing economic anxiety American families are facing. New analysis shows that economic security, the knowledge that you will be able to put a roof over your children's heads and food on the table, has been growing progressively scarcer for Americans for the last 25 years. Rising medical costs and unemployment mean that in 2009 a record number of Americans, more than 20 in 100, were projected to lose at least quarter of their income without any financial safety net to fall back on.

America, welcome to the insecurity of being a single mother.

While this level of economic insecurity is a sharp increase for most Americans, it's what single mothers have been living with for years. Between 2000 and 2007, about 19 in 100 single mothers lost a quarter or more of their income each year.

This graph is from the Economic Security Index.

(The researchers did not estimate what the level of economic insecurity among single moms would be in 2009. Given the high rate of unemployment among single moms in the recession and expected surge in poverty, the percentage of single moms losing more than 25 percent of their income could be well above 20 percent in 2009).

More Americans are now living with the anxieties single mothers struggled with before the recession.  We hope that builds support for policies to improve economic security—for all of us.

Dear Senators: Thanks for extending UI. Now how about a job?

by Julie Vogtman, Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

Yesterday the Senate passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for approximately 2.5 million people who are unemployed and looking for work. This is an important and long overdue measure to help Americans who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks, but the underlying problem remains: there are simply not enough jobs to go around. 

There is no single fix for the floundering job market. But one Recovery Act program, the TANF Emergency Fund, has shown great promise as an effective and efficient method of job creation. To date, the $5 billion Fund has subsidized thousands of jobs for individuals who otherwise likely would have remained unemployed, as well as provided emergency assistance to families in crisis, and it is expected to directly create more than 185,000 jobs in both the public and private sectors before it expires in September. Extending the Fund through FY 2011 with an additional $2.5 billion, as the House voted to do in the extenders bill passed in May, would allow states to continue and expand successful job creation programs.

The Right Side of History

by Fatima Goss Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment,
National Women's Law Center

I had the pleasure of attending the White House Middle Class Task Force event, where the Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force presented its recommendation to help close the wage gap (which, if you read this blog you know stands at 77 cents on the dollar and is even worse for women of color). The Task Force announced that it would engage in additional data collection, public education, and coordination among the key agencies to enhance enforcement of the nation's laws against pay discrimination. The federal government would also work to become a model employer, addressing wage disparities within the federal workforce.

The final recommendation of the Taskforce, reinforced strongly by both Vice President Biden and President Obama, was to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The House passed the Act in January 2009 and as Vice President Biden put it—it's time for the Senate to "get on with it." The Paycheck Fairness Act is a commonsense bill that provides additional tools for enforcing the pay discrimination laws and ensures that women who prove their case are compensated fairly. The bill has 40 Senate co-sponsors and recent polling demonstrates that the public strongly supports the Act. In other words, this bill is a no-brainer. So in the end, as the Vice President emphasized, the real question is whether this Congress will be on the right side of history and on the side of families. 

It's time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. 

Not Satisfied with a "Small" Wage Gap for Younger Women

by Valerie Norton, Public Policy Fellow,
National Women's Law Center

Catherine Rampell's recent post on NYTimes.com’s Economix Blog discusses the smaller wage gap that exists between younger women and their male counterparts, pointing out that the gap in pay generally widens with age. Here at NWLC, this isn’t really news to us, and Rampell herself includes a chart that shows how over the last 30 years older women have almost always had a larger gap in pay.

Moving beyond Rampell's analysis of median weekly earnings and looking at median annual earnings data (NWLC's preferred source because it includes workers who have earnings at least 50 weeks out of the year), we find that women aged 15 to 24 working full-time, year-round earn just 87 percent of what their male counterparts earn. By the time they reach the critical years leading up to retirement, that 13 percent pay gap has more than doubled: women aged 45 to 64 who work full-time, year-round earn only 73 percent of what men do. 

Equal Pay for Equal Work: Still a Myth in the Legal Profession

by Kavitha Sivashanker, Fellow,
National Women's Law Center

A new study released this week highlights the difficulties that female partners face in law firm compensation systems, and analyzes the factors contributing to the large pay disparities between female and male partners in law firms. The Project for Attorney Retention and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, in collaboration with the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, just released a study entitled New Millennium, Same Glass Ceiling? that surveyed nearly 700 women law firm partners to examine the impact of law firm compensation systems on female partners. 

Women today are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men, but the report describes how professional women actually have the largest gender wage gap in our economy. The wage gap between women and men in the legal profession is staggering, for example, with female equity partners earning $66,000 less on average than male equity partners in law firms. And 90 percent of women lawyers report that they have encountered sex discrimination, a percentage that unfortunately has not decreased since women first started to enter the legal profession in the late 1970s.

What Women (Business Owners) Want

by Rebecca Kahane, Intern,
National Women's Law Center

Helping small businesses is all the rage these days—and real help for real small businesses would be good news for women—and the economy. Between 1997 and 2002, the number of women-owned firms in the U.S. grew at nearly twice the rate of all U.S. firms (this is the latest data that’s available from the Census Bureau, but new data is scheduled to be released soon). Women-owned small businesses are expected to contribute significantly to future job growth. A recent study predicted that while women-owned businesses account for 16 percent of total employment today, they will be responsible for creating one-third of the 15.3 million new jobs anticipated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics by 2018.

But talking about helping small businesses is different from implementing policies that actually help small businesses. Too many policies justified on the grounds of helping small businesses do little or nothing to actually help them. As the daughter of small business owners, I find it exceedingly frustrating when policies that favor rich people and big business are justified using false claims of their effects on small business owners.

"Getting Organized" Brings Benefits to Child Care Providers, Families, and Children

by Helen Blank, Director, Leadership and Public Policy, 
National Women's Law Center 

The movement to authorize home-based child care providers to join unions and negotiate with the state for better compensation and working conditions continues to grow. Unions are organizing both regulated family child care programs (FCC) and "family, friend, and neighbor" (FFN) care providers who are exempt from regulation but serve children receiving child care assistance. This is a promising strategy for improving the treatment of FCC and FFN providers, a poorly paid and overwhelmingly female workforce, and for increasing overall investments in child care. 

An update of the National Women’s Law Center’s 2007 report, Getting Organized: Unionizing Home-Based Child Care Providers 2010 Update, finds that since 2007, the number of states authorizing unions to represent home-based child care providers and negotiate with the state on their behalf has doubled from seven to fourteen. 

In most states where agreements between the union and the state have been reached, legislatures have approved the funding called for and raised reimbursement rates for home-based providers, and in some states, for child care centers as well. Several states have expanded access to training opportunities and incentives for FCC and FFN providers, increased access to health insurance, and made it more certain that providers will be paid in a timely fashion.

While child care unions have had notable successes on behalf of child care providers, their progress in some states has slowed as the worst recession in decades has taken a heavy toll on state budgets. However, as the Center's report shows, "getting organized" has given home-based child care providers a stronger voice in tough times: winning some significant gains, averting some cuts, securing a role in making the decisions that affect their lives, and highlighting the importance of child care.

Let Them Eat Cake

by Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security,
National Women's Law Center

They don’t get it—or don't care.

Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, and nearly 7 million Americans have been out of work for over 6 months.

Yet, once again, a minority of Senators blocked help for millions of struggling families. Hold your Senators accountable for their actions by making a phone call today. 

Providing unemployment benefits and other assistance to families and helping states and localities protect jobs and services aren’t just compassionate. They are the best ways to help a fragile economy.

While your Senators are home, they need to hear from you. We can't let another week go by without giving families the support they need.

Tell your Senators that we need legislation that extends unemployment insurance benefits and emergency assistance for families in crisis. And it needs to include additional Medicaid funding for states, or else we'll face further cuts to health care, education, emergency assistance and other vital services for children and families. That's right, inaction means more pink slips.

We need your help. Contact your home offices and demand real help for families, states, and the economy.

Thank you for continuing to fight for women and families.

Hill Briefing Underscores Need for Action on the Local Jobs for America Act

by Julie Vogtman, Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) recently co-sponsored a congressional briefing on "The Recession's Deepening Toll on Women." After Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners (LRP) presented results from a new poll showing most Americans believe the government should do more to promote economic recovery, Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Gwen Moore (D-WI) and Linda Sánchez (D-CA) shared their views on how the recession is affecting women—and how the Local Jobs for America Act can help. 

Some highlights from the briefing:

• According to a nationwide survey conducted by LRP, most Americans still feel very negatively about the state of the economy, with two thirds reporting that the downturn has affected their families. Despite talk of recovery, the majority of Americans—and especially low-income women and single moms—do not think their own economic situation is improving. 
• Although media reports have often focused on the higher rates of unemployment among men, Gail Cohen, Chief Economist for the Joint Economic Committee, presented data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicating that women’s job loss as a share of total job loss is extraordinary in this recession—30.3 percent of total job loss, compared with 14.4 percent in the 2001 recession and only 1.8 percent in the 1990s recession. Data also show that unemployment has spiked for single mothers, especially among minorities, at a current rate of 17.7 percent for African-American moms and 13.8 percent for Latinas. And married women have become the sole wage earner in many households as their husbands have lost their jobs; since the recession began, the percentage of married couples in which the husband is unemployed and the wife is working has more than doubled.