5.4 Million Women Lost Their Jobs Last Year

We're looking at a major shift in our workforce—and not for the better.

In 12 months, an extraordinary number of women lost their jobs. As a woman and as a business owner, the data pouring in about how the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women—specifically, women of color—hit me like a ton of bricks. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported back in December that over 22.1 million jobs have been lost to the COVID-19 crisis—an incredibly stark number to begin with. But the greatest hit to the workforce has been the job loss experienced by women. 

Take this in:

• Women have suffered the majority of all pandemic-related job losses, with women accounting for 55% of overall net job loss since the start of the crisis. 
• Overall, more than 2.1 million women dropped out of the workforce entirely from January to December last year—that’s roughly 200,000 women a month. 
• More than 2 in 5 of the 12.1 million jobs held by women lost between February and April have not yet returned—and may never return. 

Women are leaving the workforce for a few reasons. A University of Pittsburgh study found industries that were more likely to be severely impacted by the pandemic, industries like hospitality and personal care, employ far more women than men. Those jobs have been slow to come back and are still higher risk when it comes to COVID transmission. But another driving factor has been the cataclysmic loss of childcare. In a survey conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), working parents in five countries, including the U.S., were interviewed about childcare duties. On average, childcare duties increased an additional 27 hours per week during the pandemic. Out of those 27 extra hours of childcare responsibilities, women picked up roughly 15 of them. Yes, parents have been placed in an impossible position, but women in particular are leaving the workforce in record numbers to help their families navigate this traumatic time. 

Women make up 81% of Black Sheep’s workforce and our work would not be what it is without them. My mind started whirring around the magnitude of these losses. How can we even calculate that loss in terms of ideas and brilliance and drive? What is being done to make sure these women come back—and how will their pay be adjusted to compensate for these great periods without earning?

And perhaps more importantly, how are we architecting our post-COVID-19 work world to welcome and support women? 

As a team, we’re taking proactive steps to assume ongoing flexibility for our employees, so they are not faced with the hard choice of holding onto a paycheck or taking a caretaker role within their family. I talked about my experience of shifting to a fully remote, locked-in-a-house-with-two-kids role back in August. To say it was a challenge to figure out how to run an agency, manage clients and lead a team WHILE simultaneously being a parent and partner AND trying to stay healthy and safe in the middle of a global pandemic would vastly undersell how damn hard it was. And that’s been with childcare help most of the time. This has been rough for every person who is working. Every person who is trying to hold down a family. Every person who wants to stay healthy. But the data shows that this is drastically impacting women more than men, and more distinctly, it’s affecting women of color. 

According to a synopsis put out by the National Women’s Law Center, young women of color have been the hardest hit by job loss. One in 12 Black women ages 20 and over are unemployed. One in 11 Latinas in the same age group are without a job. One in 9 women with disabilities are experiencing the same hardship. 

So this is a call of accountability to my fellow leaders in our space: prioritize hiring women. Reset the balance in the workplace by expanding the spaces where you look for and recruit candidates. And prioritize increasing your BIPOC candidate pool. The numbers don’t lie—there are talented BIPOC professionals looking to make an impact immediately.

This data paints a bleak story, but we can take action based on this information and, together, impact the trajectory for women. We’re excited to do that here at Black Sheep and hope you are, too. Oh, and on a not-so-side note: We are hiring. If you’re looking, please apply!