Women’s Labor Force Participation Rate is “Only” Down 1 Point Since Before the Pandemic. This Is Not Good News.

We are all desperate for some good news. And those of us who care about women’s economic security are particularly desperate for it.?

So it makes sense that Bloomberg would frame the slight increase in women’s workforce participation rates from the December jobs report -- especially as compared with a lower number for men -- as good news. Or, at least, news.?

But here’s the thing, and they get to this at the very end of the story -- women’s workforce participation rates are dramatically lower than men’s – 76% for women vs. 88% for men. That was true before the pandemic -- even in January of 2020 when womens’ participation rate hit an all-time high. During the pandemic the gap widened.?

The fact is that women’s workforce participation rates stagnated in the 1990s, after growing significantly, starting with the explosion of women entering the workforce in the 1960s and 1970s. And then between the 1990s and now, the rate just flattened. As Bloomberg reports, 12% of prime working age men were not working or looking for work in December. For women that number was 24%. And while that number is a slight improvement, suggesting there is a light at the end of this pandemic tunnel, it doesn’t change the fact that women’s non-participation rate is double that of men. And has been for the past 30 years.

The reasons are maddeningly obvious. Women streamed into the labor force in the 60s and 70s because what was keeping them out of the workforce prior to that time were legal barriers. It was once perfectly legal to not hire a woman for a job just because she was a woman. It was legal to fire a woman for being pregnant. When those legal barriers were removed -- voila! -- women’s workforce rates skyrocketed.?

But what didn’t change then were the cultural and systemic barriers that made participating in the workforce difficult as opposed to illegal. We still lack paid leave (even unpaid family leave wasn’t available until 1992!), universal childcare, better alignment between school hours and work hours, and more flexibility from employers.?

And then a pandemic happened. For many women this was the tornado that brought down the entire house of cards. But let’s not lose sight of the even larger group of women who had left the workforce long before COVID struck. It wasn’t the pandemic that pushed them out -- it was a fundamental lack of support that left them choosing the least-bad option off a menu of too many rotten ones.?

This isn’t just an economic issue for the women who are not currently earning a paycheck (though it is a big issue for them, one that gets routinely ignored by policymakers and cultural pundits). It is an issue for the economy overall. And it is an issue that should be far more alarming to business leaders.?

Business leaders want to hire the best and brightest. Here’s the thing about women who leave the workforce for caregiving: many of them are the best and the brightest. They aren’t leaving the workforce because of lack of ambition or desire. They aren’t lacking in merit, the attribute so many leaders point to when they try to explain away poor diversity numbers. They don’t leave because they can’t hack it at work -- a trope that never seems to thoroughly die -- but because they can’t find childcare!?

Executives need to recognize the problem of the differential in workforce participation rates by men and women as a critical business challenge and one that keeps them from attracting and retaining the talent they need to grow their companies. And they need to see that problem not as a temporary one caused by the pandemic. It? will not magically disappear when COVID finally and fully recedes into the background and schools can get back to normal. Instead they need to face the fact that this has been a problem since the 90s and is one that will only be solved with focused attention.?