family-friendly

More Young Single Mothers in the Workforce

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In a surprising change, the number of young single mothers in the workforce has been steadily climbing since 2015. Claire Cain Miller and Ernie Tedeschi, writing for the New York Times, report that the increase is being led by single mothers without college degrees, according to an analysis by the New York Times of Current Population Survey data. These single mothers face many barriers to employment, such as the challenge of finding affordable childcare and the lack of predictable work schedules. The authors note that many safety net programs have been shredded and work requirements have increased. The single mothers tend to be poorer and less educated than other working mothers, and no one has developed new federal policies to help them, so what factors account for this increase in their participation?

One obvious answer is that with a shredded safety net, they have to work. The authors note other factors probably at play:

  • Local state and city policy changes like paid leave, sick leave, and minimum wage increases have made it more feasible for single mothers to work and afford childcare. In fact, areas that raised the minimum wage saw the largest rise in the rate of single mothers who work.
  • The rate of participation in the workforce by young single mothers increased four percentage points more in states that expanded Medicaid in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act.
  • Five states and the District of Columbia enacted or expanded paid family leave since early 2016.
  • Eight states and thirteen cities enacted or expanded paid sick leave. Some companies have also extended paid leave to hourly workers.
  • State spending on public pre-K has significantly increased since 2015, and many cities have begun offering public pre-K. Since the District of Columbia instituted public pre-K, the rate of single mothers in the workforce has increased four percentage points more than the increase for married mothers.
  • The tight labor market may mean that some employers have made an effort to offer more predictable work schedules.
  • The gig economy, such as driving for Uber, also offers opportunities for single mothers to work with a flexible schedule.

No one factor seems to account for the increase of single mothers in the workforce but rather a patchwork of policies. Yet these single moms remain vulnerable to the whims of employers and the winds of economic change. We need federal policies that ensure living wages, paid leave, and subsidized childcare so parents can provide a healthy start for their children.

 

Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash

Joblessness and the “Care Chasm”: Why Women Drop Out of the Workforce

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There was a lot of focus on a dearth of middle-class jobs for men in the United States during the recent presidential election. This discussion centered on the loss of good-paying manufacturing and mining jobs for men, which have been in decline since the 1960s due to automation and globalization. Not much attention has been paid, however, to the declining number of women in the US workforce. This trend is the opposite of trends in women’s employment in other industrialized countries. What explains this difference for women in the United States? While the decline in workforce participation for working-class men began in the 1960s, the slide for women’s participation did not begin until the early 2000s. Patricia Cohen of the New York Times explains that the drop in women’s workforce participation occurred for different reasons than it did for men. During this period, women have been earning college degrees in greater numbers; also, service sector jobs, where women are traditionally concentrated, have been growing. So why have women been dropping out of the workforce? Cohen notes that we do not have the family support policies in the United States that other industrialized countries have. In fact, here “women are still the primary caregivers—for children, aging parents, and ailing relatives.” Women often cite caregiving responsibility as the reason they are unable to hold on to unstable and inflexible jobs. Cohen cites economist Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, who reports, “Hardly any men who have dropped out say it is because they are helping with children or other family members.” Eberstadt goes on to note that a “care chasm” explains the stark contrast between women’s workforce participation in the United States and their participation rate in Europe. He explains that European countries with comprehensive family support policies have seen women’s labor force participation go up since 2000, while ours has plummeted. We need to demand that our legislators support policies for affordable child care, paid family leave, elder care support, and a living wage in the United States. Family support policies are good for all of us and for our economy.   Photo courtesy of Univ. of Salford. CC by 2.0    ]]>

New Research on Family-Friendly Policies in the Workplace: Lessons from around the World

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recent New York Times article Claire Cain Miller gives examples of some of the laws that have been passed around the world to address family and career balance:

  • Chile passed a law, the most recent version in 2009, requiring employers to provide and pay for child care for women with children under two.
  • Spain passed a law in 1999 giving workers with children younger than seven the right to ask their employers for reduced hours without fear of being laid off.
  • The United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993, which provides workers with twelve weeks of unpaid leave.
  • Many other countries in Europe provide long, paid maternity leaves—some up to one year—and part-time work protections.
Several new studies, summarized by Miller, have produced some disappointing findings about the “unintended consequences” of these laws for women. We need to learn from these experiences. Here are some of these findings:
  • In Chile, the result of the requirement for employers to provide child care has been a decrease in women’s starting salaries of between 9 percent and 20 percent.
  • In Spain, women’s right to work part time has resulted, a decade later, in a decline in full-time stable jobs for all women, with companies 37 percent less likely to promote women and 45 percent more likely to dismiss them.
  • In the United States, as a result of the FMLA, women are 5 percent more likely to remain employed but 8 percent less likely to be promoted than they were before the law was passed.
  • A study of twenty-two countries with family-friendly policies found that women were more likely to be in dead-end jobs and were less likely to be managers.
Clearly, this news is not good. So what are the lessons we can learn about how to get more support for working families without penalizing women?
  • Make sure employers do not bear the costs so that they do not pass them on to their employees as in Chile. Three states in the United States offer paid family leave and finance it through employee payroll taxes, which seems to be working.
  • Keep policies gender neutral and encourage both women and men to use them. In Sweden, family leave policies encourage both parents to take time off for a new baby. In most other countries, including the United States, these policies are considered to be for women, and it is nearly all women who take advantage of them. If men take advantage of family-friendly policies, perhaps they will be seen as policies for everyone, and not just for women.
  • Continue to challenge the myths about women’s careers, described in previous blogs (“Myths about Women’s Careers,” part I and part II), and work toward equal partnership with the men in our lives.
Do you have other ideas about how to overcome the unintended consequences of family-friendly policies for women? Please let us hear them. We need to figure this out together.]]>