“I think it will be really interesting to see what the long-term consequences are on mothers’ career opportunities,” said Ariane Hegewisch, the program director in employment and earnings at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “Women have continued to work, but they clearly had to cut back.”
America’s long-running caregiving shortage, for both children and older adults, was compounded by the pandemic.
The professional caregiving work force — also disproportionately female — hasn’t recovered. More than one child care worker in 10 hasn’t returned, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (although that data may not capture all the single-employee, home-based operators that make up a huge part of the sector). The number of nursing home workers remains 11.5 percent below its level in February 2020. Together, the two categories represent a loss of 500,000 jobs.
“For women, that’s the double whammy — most of those workers are women, and most of the people who need those supports to enter the work force themselves are women,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, a senior fellow with the National Partnership for Women and Families.
At the same time, there is new demand for care. After a decrease in the number of births early in the pandemic, nearly 3.7 million people were born last year, up 1 percent from 2020 and the first such increase since 2014.
Christy Charny, a college administrative assistant in Fort Collins, Colo., recently talked to her manager about dialing back her hours from full time to part time. She likes her job and needs it for the health insurance it provides, but her 12-week-old daughter was having trouble nursing, and paying for full-time infant care was a nonstarter for her and her husband.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/business/economy/women-labor-caregiving.html
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