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Economy
Why so many women dropped out the workforce — and aren’t coming back
2021-11-15
[NYPost] Asked during a hearing a couple of weeks ago by Pennsylvania Congressman Fred Keller why "women-held positions [were] disproportionately affected by COVID-19," Inez Stepman replied: "That’s a question you should take up with Randi Weingarten."

Stepman, a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum (where I also have an affiliation) was right about that. The major reason why so many women had to drop out of the labor force in the past 18 months —and why 300,000 left the workforce in September alone — was the shuttering of schools. And Weingarten, the head of the nation’s largest teachers union, was doing everything she could to keep them closed.

This fall, even if they were not doing remote learning, many schools have been periodically quarantining large segments of their population or sending kids home with stuffy noses and waiting days for them to get negative COVID tests. It’s hard to hold down a job with this nonsense going on.

For mothers of younger children, too, there has been a shortage of daycare facilities. Because they lost so much revenue during the pandemic many of them had to close. And those that remained open are experiencing staffing shortages. According to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, 80 percent were having trouble finding workers.

Of course, this problem is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Women are dropping out of the workforce because other women who take care of their children are dropping out of the workforce.

But there are other reasons too. Women’s employment — just like men’s — was hardly encouraged by federal and state governments dropping money into their laps, either in the form of COVID relief, child tax credits or guarantees that they could not be evicted from their homes even if they didn’t pay their rent. Many upper- and middle-class Americans were able to sock away some money during the pandemic, thanks to these programs but also thanks to the fact there wasn’t much to spend money on during 2020 — no vacations or sporting events or other forms of entertainment.

While economists predict that savings is going to start to run out soon, the question of whether all those women will come rushing back to the labor force remains an open one. In survey after survey, even highly educated women — particularly those with young families — say they prefer part-time work. A study in JAMA from 2019 found that among doctors with kids, 31 percent of women and 5 percent of men worked part-time. Even more interestingly, 64 percent of women have considered changing to part-time compared to only 21 percent of men.
Related:
Randi Weingarten: 2021-10-03 Nat'l Teachers Union Prez Panicked DeSantis Will Trigger Flight To Private Schools
Randi Weingarten: 2021-07-01 Kira Davis: No More Dancing Around...It's Time to End Teachers Unions
Randi Weingarten: 2021-04-08 Teachers' union head blames Jews for school reopening controversy
Posted by:trailing wife

#15  kitchen, laundry room, bedroom, football/baseball/soccer practice, book club, vacation, did I miss anything....
Posted by: 746   2021-11-15 21:11  

#14  The only schools that should be provided are k-12 with STEM, civics, and some 'Will Durant' humanities . No support for post k-12 except for vocational (trade) school.
Posted by: irish rage boy   2021-11-15 20:29  

#13  ^The problem growing older you can see the changes before and after. The G man, "G. Gordon Liddy as "a man of fantastic intelligence and complexity." Educated privately by Benedictines and Jesuits, Liddy earned a B.S. degree from Fordham University and an Ll.D. from the Fordham Law School, graduating as an editor of The Fordham Law Review". Wrote a book on the subject contrasting his early days to today. I relay what I see. I am a realist. I don't make this stuff up. DC was my home area. I can never go back. I prefer to remember DC as it was not what it is today. The mid sixties things began to change. When; if you are lucky, the family gathers for thanksgiving. Phones, TV all now compete for time. Many of the young can't even cook anymore. Today's world is a cheap counterfeit of what used to be. So where do I live now, small town USA near DC and Baltimore.
Posted by: Dale   2021-11-15 13:47  

#12  Dunno what neighborhood you live in, Dale, but you sound terribly pessimistic. I prefer to think of it as shown in Besoeker's graphic with the little girl helping her mother to hang clothes on a line so they can dry naturally in the air without using all that icky gas and electricity.

I know things are somewhat different today but I remember my own mother never worked outside the home. We walked home from school to our own mother instead of some stranger. There were cookies and milk. The house was clean and orderly. Instead of buying new blue jeans, she sewed patches on the knees of the jeans we had. Then we could go outside and play in our own neighborhood with our little neighborhood brat pack. Boy, that was fun. Really. Running around unsupervised outside all that time, I'm sure we grew up tougher and more street wise than today's kids. If we did get hurt, we could always run home to mom who would take care of it. Somehow my dad provided for all that. We weren't rich. We didn't live in the nicest neighborhood. But we did alright.

But, yes, dad was definitely in the picture and mom did not drink or do drugs. We did not get food stamps or welfare either. Dad did it all the old fashioned way. He worked for it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2021-11-15 13:07  

#11  not mentioned is the implosion in the leisure and hospitality sector of the economy

a lot of women are desk clerks, cooks, do housekeeping work, bar tenders, waitresses, etc.

employment in this industry plummeted during the lockdown phase of the pandemic

it is coming back now but still a long, long way to go as a lot of retail in downtown areas is tied to on site employment of office workers and if those people continue remote work, the retail will not fully recover
Posted by: Lord Garth   2021-11-15 08:49  

#10  * front-row seat at the circus
Posted by: Merrick Ferret   2021-11-15 08:19  

#9  Don't forget the other clarifying effect of this: Zoom instruction by incompetent public schoolteachers. Moms (and dads) got a felony-row seat at the circus that is most public school classrooms: semi-literate teachers, infantile curriculums, kids checked out and not learning a damn thing. No responsibke mom would go off to work knowing that her school aged children were in the hands of such lunatics.

Now the parents know why so many US kids are either fat and ignorant or striving but neurotic and depressed all the time. Our culture is sick and our schools reflect this rot.

All of which has been true for more than three decades of stupid fads like Common Core. Or the sixty-year reign of "phonics," that now-acknowledged debacle which rendered two generations of Americans less literate than their mid 20c- educated predecessors.
Posted by: Merrick Ferret   2021-11-15 08:18  

#8  ^ that all exited prior to the Great Lockdown. The question posed is why now.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2021-11-15 08:16  

#7  "Mother's Little Helper" came out in 1966...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2021-11-15 08:15  

#6  ^Not in today's world. Men are out of the family unit.Much happier as a result.Nurses quitting healthcare and are taking jobs at Dollar Generals. Taking early retirements also. Women better at childcare hardly. Taking drugs and letting the kids run wild is the new normal. Several children from different men. ADD, OCD, bipolar you name it. I see it every day. The new normal. The man who is sucked into a relationship is most likely the loser. Child support, child threatens abuse or she does and you know how that goes. Money is the first loss. Freedom a close second. So the school has a problem with a child. The mother replies when contacted(if at all) if you can do a better job, take them. City kids family these days is most likely a gang.The new normal and this has been coming on for several years now.
Posted by: Dale   2021-11-15 08:10  

#5  And they've had over a year of budget management, learned to prioritize what is really important and what is simply self gratification for its own sake. Close the restaurants and dining out stop being an option and an expense (compounded by Bideninflation to nip the practice on the reopening). Suddenly, many discover it has been a rat race.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2021-11-15 07:45  

#4  
Sexist as it sounds.

Given the School and Pre-K closings over the last almost 18+ months. Someone needed to stay home. Females have always had better control of the brats, and management of the house, than the sperm donor.


Posted by: NN2N1   2021-11-15 07:19  

#3  Tune in, turn on, drop out

Smash the State, 1970 2021 version
Posted by: Merrick Ferret   2021-11-15 01:11  

#2  Perhaps 80,000 new IRS agents and those new Blue Bird school buses won't be needed after all. We're teaching life-skills right here at home now.

Actions, they have consequences.
Posted by: Besoeker   2021-11-15 00:56  

#1  The question: "What useful service other than babysitting does the public school system provide?"
Posted by: magpie   2021-11-15 00:39  

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