It wasn’t that long ago that experts were worrying that women, especially moms, would never recover from the shock of 2020. But when it comes to the job market, they turned out to be wrong.
More mothers are working now than before the pandemic began.
From February to April 2020, mothers’ employment plummeted nearly 16%, notes an analysis released by the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau.
The assumption was that whoever left the workforce would have a tough time getting back in, and that would likely “exacerbate inequalities” between men and women, as one academic paper pointed out at the time.
Instead, the labor market saw fast growth in 2021 and 2022 and pulled mostly everyone who wanted to work back to the market.
One driver of this growth? Remote work.
Last year, about 24% of mothers said they worked from home at least some of the time — and rates were even higher for those whose youngest child is under the age of 6, according to the analysis.
Progress has been uneven. Mothers who do not have a bachelor’s degree haven’t quite gotten back to their pre-pandemic levels — likely because they’re less likely to work in remote-friendly industries.
The child care industry still hasn’t recovered from the crisis and may put a damper on this trend.
Often when we report on mothers who are employed outside the home, folks write in and say these women are forced into the labor market because of cost pressures.
There’s little evidence that’s true, says Tiffany Boiman, deputy director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau.
Plus, when mothers are working that’s good for a families economic security overall, she says. “Whatever unexpected shocks come down the road, they are going to be better positioned to weather those if they are already working.”
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