Does the media fairly present the un(der)-employment rate among experienced professional women ? Mark Twain's insights.

Is the reality facing millions of experienced professional women in today’s workplace environment being taken seriously by the mainstream media?

On one side, the government states that there are more jobs out there than there are unemployed. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/job-openings-decline-but-still-outpace-workers-by-more-than-800000.html

On the other hand, many experienced professionals, especially women over 50, are often having to send out hundreds of applications to find only part-time gigs that pay significantly less than what their experience level should be worth. https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-a-booming-job-market-cant-fill-retirement-shortfall-for-older-workers-11545326195?mod=hp_lead_pos5

So where is the truth?

As Mark Twain was fond of saying: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

To understand the scope of the problem requires, unfortunately, a little detour into how government statistics are created and reported. First, what the news typically reports is the Unemployment Rate (U3).  That only counts people without jobs who are considered part of the labor force and is currently at 4.0%. https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

Even the so-called Real Unemployment Rate(U6) does not tell the whole story when it includes the underemployed, the marginally attached and discouraged workers.  The current Real Unemployment Rate is 8.1% https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

Why don't these statistics properly show what is happening to experienced professional women trying to rejoin the workforce? One reason, not surprisingly, is that most such women do not go to the local unemployment office to register and so are not captured by standard government statistics. Another quirk is that the labor force only includes people ages 15-64, so if you are older, you are not working! https://data.oecd.org/pop/working-age-population.htm

What is needed is a better way to reveal the scope of the problem. One possible proxy to measure the impact of how our society is currently treating experienced professional women trying to return to work is the Labor Force Participation Rate, currently at 63.2% of the population. https://www.thebalance.com/labor-force-participation-rate-formula-and-examples-3305805

If that is a more realistic measure, then, to state the obvious, that means the Un(under)employment Rate for this under-appreciated part of our society is over 30%!

While that may seem shocking at first blush, anecdotal evidence that many of us experience would tend to affirm the reality of that number. When seen from that perspective, if our society is going to deal with that iceberg sized problem, then business as usual will not really help solve the systemic issues that lurk below the surface.

True, there are some efforts being made and progress is happening on certain fronts. I would suggest that the very high visibility that such stories receive underscores the size of the problem and how unusual it is for someone to actually do something about it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-a-booming-job-market-cant-fill-retirement-shortfall-for-older-workers-11545326195?mod=hp_lead_pos5

Employers are missing out on a hugely talented pool of individuals. Experienced professional women have the life skills, experience and background, and just plain perseverance, to accomplish an enormous amount. However, our society needs to recognize the genuine size of the challenges they face in this re-entry process, and that each of us need to take ownership for whatever piece of the pie we can.

Stayed tuned next time for some suggestions on how to tackle these problems. In the meantime, feel free to add your insights