Economic recovery must include women, minorities

 

Bill Knight column for 3-15, 16 or 17, 2021

March is Women’s History Month, a good time to remind each other that, historically, women have been paid less than their male counterparts.

Considering such injustice for our mothers, daughters, wives and sisters, one wonders how employers justify ignoring the sensible maxim “We all do better when we ALL do better.”

The divisive “trickle-down” economic theory promoted by Republicans as helping regular workers by enriching their employers hasn’t worked, in good times or bad.

And these are bad times.

Especially for women and minorities.

Most recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Situation report last month said 379,000 jobs were created in February, keeping the unemployment rate at 6.2 percent. That might be positive in good times, but the nation’s jobs are down about 9.5 million from a year ago, and adding the actual numbers of how many people filing for, or already receiving, state or federal unemployment aid checks since BLS’ survey shows that one of seven U.S. workers are jobless.

As the White House Council of Economic Advisers tweeted, at this “positive” rate, it would take until April 2023 to restore lost jobs.

Maybe overlooked in that Big Picture of the struggling economy are data about women and minorities. Looking at earnings percentages overall, American women earn 81.5% of men’s pay, BLS says. In Illinois, women make 79.9% of men, near the middle of states’ statistics, with the worst in Wyoming (where women get 72.5% of men), and the best in Maryland (where women earn 89% of their male colleagues).

Adding to that chronic gap in pay between men and women, is the gap between Whites and Blacks, as shown by Department of Labor data on usual weekly earnings (and women’s pay percentages of their male counterparts): Black men: $830 and Black women: $764 (92% of men); White men: $1,110 and White women: $905 (81.5% of men).

Perhaps losing perspective or ignoring income inequality are all 50 Republican Senators who on March 5 voted against an amendment to the coronavirus relief package to restore the $15 minimum wage proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Even MORE, eight Democrats joined with those 50. MOST troubling is that seven of those eight Democrats are millionaires. Yes, failing their constituents and their political party were these Democratic senators (and the millionaires’ net worth): Tom Carper (Del.; $5.7 million), Chris Coons (Del., $10.1 million), Maggie Hassan (N.H. $3.4 million), Angus King (Maine, $9.4 million), Joe Manchin (W. Va., $7.6 million), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H. 43.8 million), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz. – not yet as wealthy), and Jon Tester (Mont., $3.6 million).

Janelle Jones of the U.S. Department of Labor last month wrote of all the workers falling between the cracks of the economy, again, especially women and minorities.

“In addition to major disparities in health impacts, Black Americans have seen disproportionate economic impacts from the pandemic,” Jones said. “Among demographic groups, Black women experienced the steepest drop in labor force participation and have had the slowest job recovery since January 2020. It took until 2018 for Black women’s employment to recover from the Great Recession, and now almost all those hard-won gains have been erased.

“In January 2021, 973,000 fewer Black women were employed than in February 2020, a decrease of 9.5% since the COVID-19 pandemic began,” she continued.

Department of Labor statistics show these percentages of jobs lost:

* Black men: -7.2%

* Black women: -9.5%

* Hispanic men: -6.8%

* Hispanic women: -8.3%

* White men: -5.1%

* White women: -5.2%

 

“Due to longstanding inequities in education and the labor market, Black women workers are overrepresented in low-paying service sector jobs, which have been slow to rebound as the country still grapples with the virus,” Jones added. “The industry that employs the largest number of Black women is education and health services – about 3.9 million Black women worked in this sector in 2020. A number of studies have shown that workers in occupations with lower average earnings were much more likely to be displaced by the pandemic than those with higher average earnings.”

Whether looking at jobs or pay, or at gender, class or race, workers aren’t gaining with record stock markets or rising CEO pay. After the American Rescue Plan was passed and signed last week, maybe Congress can now consider the Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced Jan. 28, which would close loopholes that have let employers pay women less than men for the same work, ensure that women would have the same remedies for gender-based pay discrimination that’s available for discrimination based on race and ethnicity, etc.

It’s time to make up for lost time – in bad times or good.

“Everybody in!”