2020 was a prominent year in history with the virus and lockdowns around the world, a stressful year for all, but incredibly stressful in particular for those who lost their jobs, and with that, their income. There are many interesting, but shocking statistics to this that aren’t widely known, which outline both the gender and racial demographics around unemployment.
Last year, for 3 months, women held more jobs in the U.S. than men, a historic achievement for women considering that the average woman earns only 81 cents to a man’s dollar. This had only happened once before for a much shorter period in 2009. Unfortunately, the new data that arrived in December put an end to that good news.
In December, while the rest of the world was slowly but steadily recovering from the virus, the U.S wasn’t. More jobs were lost than gained. But that’s not all; sexism came into play. Women lost a total of 156,000 jobs in December, while men gained 16,000 jobs. So the total number of jobs lost was a shocking 140,000. All held by women.
This means that employers fired women and gave the jobs held by them to men. Women ended the year having 5.4 million jobs less than they had at the start of the year while men suffered from a loss of 4.4 million jobs in the same year.
From CNN business
This graph shows that early last year women and men were nearly on the same playing scale in terms of jobs held by the genders, but it took a deep negative tip in March and April. When the economy started to improve towards the end of the year, the number of jobs held by women were significantly lesser than men and with no reason other than employers’ sexism. Employers took advantage of hiring new people and hired men instead of women.
Racism also had a huge impact. Black and Latina women lost more jobs while white women gained more jobs. Employers gave jobs held by women of colour to white women. Employers took advantage of the opportunity they had to discriminate against people of colour.
Around the world people of colour are many times more likely than white men and women to be sick, to get a lower paycheck, to be living in an area that does not have quality facilities etc. The pandemic has only made it worse for them. Giving the few jobs held by them in the first place to others just because of a lighter skin colour impacts people of colour a lot. It may take years for them to be where they were before the pandemic.
As I mentioned before, the pandemic hit women, but there is further discrimination amongst women. There are three main sectors held more by women than men - education, hospitality, and retail. All three sectors were crushed hard by the pandemic. Schools and shops were closed, and travel became a thing of the past. These industries fell hard and with them, the women who worked in them.
Around the world, sexism, racism and the wage gap still exist, with an increasing number of women losing their jobs to the opposite gender.
But it doesn’t stop there. Even among women, there is more discrimination. Latina women have the highest percentage of unemployment, followed by black women, and at the very bottom of the list are white women.
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