When 50% Isn't Quite 50%

“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

I can’t help it - that’s the line that runs through my head every time I read or hear yet another story heralding the much anticipated moment when women become 50% or more of the workforce. And just as Chicken Little was guilty of mistaking an acorn for part of the sky, almost all of the coverage of this so-called trend has failed to note one very important thing about this statistic: the numbers upon which this assertion is based don’t include the entire labor force. And the part they don’t include is predominantly male.

Labor statistics are drawn from two different sources – the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is a monthly survey of households (referred to as “Household Data”), and Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, which is a survey of nonfarm payroll employment from businesses and government agencies, also updated monthly (referred to as “Establishment Data”). By definition, the Current Employment Statistics excludes individuals who work in agricultural industries and anyone who is self-employed (or unemployed but looking for work). And therein lies the problem.

The CES is a count of payroll jobs only and provides an estimate the number of jobs lost and gained in specific industry segments (among other things). The estimate of the size of the employed labor force from the CES varies from the estimates from the other source of labor force data, the Current Population Survey (CPS), by as many as 8 million people (140 million by the CPS vs. 132 million by the CES). There’s a difference of 22 million if you include the entire labor force (including those unemployed but looking for work – which we’ve been told over and over again is predominantly male).

The statistics that show women closing in on 50% come from the CES – the establishment survey, which provides the smaller of the two numbers. Remember that this number excludes farm workers (farming, fishing and forestry occupations are 79% male according to CPS figures). Men also outnumber women in the number that are self-employed (men are approximately 66% of the total).

There are a couple of other challenges in using CES data to support the idea that women are on the verge of an earth-shattering accomplishment. One is that the payroll data from the CES double-counts people who have multiple jobs as there is no way to eliminate that from the way the data are reported. In the past, women have been more likely to have multiple jobs (they are 52% of multiple job holders based on CPS data), and therefore, there has been a tendency for the CES data to include an overcount of women in the labor force.

In addition, the pattern we’re seeing during this economic recession is typical of any period of economic retraction -- the tightening of the difference between men and women in the workforce based on payroll data -- is generally seen in periods of recession or economic slowdown - for all the same reasons as now. Construction and manufacturing, which are predominantly male, get hit first, while the lower paying jobs typically held by women are affected later. And let’s not forget that the jobs men are losing pay an average of $18 to $20 an hour and the service sector jobs held by many women pay under $10 (and are usually part-time and without benefits), so the fact that women aren't losing those jobs at the same rate as men isn't really good news for anyone.

While the commotion has made for interesting headlines and water-cooler conversations, it has also left a great deal of the story about the impact of the current economic climate on women untold, and certainly led some to believe that women were riding through the recession with limited pain. Such is certainly not been the case, as the rate of unemployment among female headed households has been skyrocketing (11% to 11.7% to 12.6% in the months preceding August) before starting to decline again in August and September (12.2% in Aug and 11.6% in Sept). And the labor force participation rate among women 65 years and older is the highest it's been since the Labor Dept started recording data – these are women who are being forced back into the work force by the loss of pensions and/or benefits. Finally, women have been hit hard with job losses in some industry sectors where they are typically paid pretty well - at one point 75% of the layoffs in the finance and insurance industry had been women when they only make up about 60% of the industry's workforce, out of line with the gender distribution.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I think that more women in the workforce is a bad thing – economists in fact have concluded that much of the global economic growth in the past several decades has been driven by the addition of women to the workforce (http://sn.im/sjeg0). But as Renée Loth noted in her recent Boston Globe op-ed (http://sn.im/sfcun), in spite of those gains by women, the wage gap has stagnated, and women continue to find that their role as care-giver can cost them the opportunity for advancement and fair compensation (even in the most family-friendly companies). So if I’m not dancing a jig over the idea that women may take over the world of work, it’s because I’m not convinced such a change will have a lasting impact on the challenges women continue to face getting a fair shake on the job. Call me when women are 50% of the senior executives and CEOs, 50% of the board members, and 50% of the highest paid executives, and I’ll dance on the tables. Until then, though, let’s not mistake a single statistic for the coming of a new day. Sometimes a nut is really just a nut.

GRANDMA GOES TO WORK

A colleague recently brought a troubling trend to my attention. She works at the New Directions Career Center, a not-for-profit organization that provides career counseling services in central Ohio, with a focus on serving the needs of women in career transitions or re-entering the workforce.

In their 30-year history, they've seen their target audience change significantly based on the growth of women's participation in the labor force and the economy. Of particular concern to them in the past year has been the influx of older women, 65 to 84 years of age, either retired or widowed, who are entering or being driven back into the workforce by the current economic climate and the loss, in many cases, of pensions and/or health benefits. Their oldest female client right now is 80-plus years of age.

In addition to the career coaching and job search services NDCC provides, their counselors have been challenged to help these "seasoned" women confront a whole new set of fears. These clients are afraid - afraid that they will not be able to find employment, or employment that will pay enough for them to make ends meet. The clients worry that they won't be able to find a job with health benefits or be able to afford them if they're offered. And they worry about whether or not they'll be able to handle the work in office environments that have changed significantly in the past 20 years. In particular, these older clients worry about being able to learn how to use the technology, fairly certain that they will be ridiculed because of their lack of computer skills.

It turns out that workforce participation among older workers does tend to move up in periods of recession, for many of the same reasons are we are seeing now. But in March 2009, 12.8% of women age 65 and older were in the workforce, the highest participation rate for women in that age bracket since the federal government began computing reliable unemployment rates (1948), and a 147% increase since 1977 (BLS, 2009). (For men age 65 and older, the increase since 1977 has been 75%).

The economic challenges women face as they age are well documented; when compared to similarly aged men:

• older women workers are less likely to be living with a partner or spouse (62% vs. 80% for men), and are more likely to be on their own when it comes to household resources. (1)
• older women are less likely to have had continuous employment throughout their adult lives, affecting both their record of work experience and their contribution to Social Security or pension funds. (1)
• older women are more likely to be working part-time (25% vs. 8% for men), and not necessarily by choice: 16.9% of women age 60-64 report being underemployed, vs. 12.1% of men the same age. (2)
• older women (age 55 to 59) workers are more likely to have no expectation of retirement benefits (40% of women vs. 27% of men) and are more likely (43% of women vs. 30% of men) to report that they are working because they need the income to pay day to day living expenses. (3)
• older women employees generally live in households with lower family incomes than their male counterparts ($64,444 vs. $80,839). (1)
• for older female workers, the wage gap in hourly rates is 69 cents for every dollar earned by a man. (1)

The general labor statistics covered by the media every month rarely drill down into the nuances of the numbers; the focus in this current recession has been on job losses experienced by men. It takes the folks at the front line, like the counselors at NDCC, to help us understand the complexity of the employment picture and the challenges faced by women, in this case, older women, that reflect the impact of long-term gender differences in the workplace.

Sources:

1. Bond, J., Galinsky, E., et. al. (2005). Diverse Employment Experiences of Older Men and Women in the Workforce.
2. Slack, Tim and Jensen, Leif. 2008. "Employment Hardship among Older Workers: Does Residential and Gender Inequality Extend into Older Age?" Journals of Gerontology, 63(1): S15-S24.
3. Living Longer, Working Longer: The Changing Landscape of the Aging Workforce - A MetLife Study

Also:

• U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2008). BLS Spotlight on Statistics: Older Workers.

Most Recent Labor Force Statistics

Women in nonfarm labor force (from Current Employment Statistics establishment data; excludes agricultural workers and self-employed):

• June 2009: 65,650,000 - 49.83% of labor force (previous month: 49.78%)
  

Female-headed households - unemployment rate (from Current Population Survey household data):

• July 2009: 12.6% (11.7% in June)

Women age 65 and older (from Current Population Survey household data):

• July 2009 percent of population in labor force: 13.4% (21.6% for men age 65 and over)
  
• July 2009 unemployment rate: 7.3% (6.8% for men age 65 and over)
  

Women in the Labor Force Updates

June employment figures released the first week of July 2009. Here's a couple of key stats from those new numbers.

• The overall unemployment rate increased just slightly: from 9.4% in May to 9.5% in June. The employment rate for adult men now stands at 10% and at 7.6% for adult women. (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm)
  
• Women hold a record 49.8% of payroll jobs but job gains have stalled in sectors that employ them. (http://snurl.com/iow-labf)
• Unemployment among single female heads of households increased nearly 1% in 6/09, from 11% to 11.7%. This rate is nearly 50% higher than 6/08, when it was 7.9%. (http://snurl.com/iow-sfhh)

(See our blog post on women in the labor force - it covers some things to keep in mind when you come across labor force stats that herald the coming of the female-majority labor force.)

Women in the Labor Force

University of Chicago economist Casey B. Mulligan started a bit of a buzz when he observed in the New York Times Economix blog that women had risen to over 49% of the labor force (49.1%) in November, 2008. Mulligan went on to suggest that women might become the majority in the workforce should job losses in male-dominated industries continue into 2009.

While the story may have made for interesting headlines (As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in the Labor Force) and water-cooler conversations, it left a great deal of the story about the impact of the current economic climate on women untold, and certainly led some to believe that women were riding through the recession with limited pain. Such is not the case, as the following elaborate.

• The National Women's Law Center has reported that since September 2008, when the recession began to impact industry sectors that employ primarily women, the rate of unemployment among women has actually been rising faster than the rate of men. NWLC also noted that unemployment among women who head households is 10.3% (Feb. 2009 figures), up over 50% in the past year.
• The overall numbers mask job losses for women in industries where they are employed in white-collar, professional positions. In her Forbes.com article, Terminated: Why the Women of Wall Street are Disappearing, author Anita Raghavan reported that companies in the financial services and insurance industries have cut 260,000 jobs during the current recession, and that "seventy-two percent of the missing workers laid off have been women, even though they constituted 64% of employment before the crash began."
• The New York Times previously reported in July 2008 that women were now "equal as victims" in deteriorating economic conditions. The article noted that: "after moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut" - so much so for the first time since the women's movement took hold, the percentage of women working has fallen. Originally written off as a result of women "opting-out," economists now believe it is a response to the current economic climate.
  

The website Fem2.0 recently sponsored a "blog carnival" on the subject of women and work - contributors include Joan Williams (Unbending Gender), best-selling author Gloria Feldt and Ohio's own Jill Miller Zimon (Writes Like She Talks blog). There's a great array of viewpoints represented; it's worth taking a look.