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the role of education in the pandemic unemployment

Did education protect people from pandemic unemployment? [Pew Research]

The covid recession resulted in a steep but transitory contraction in employment, with greater job losses among US women than men. A recovery began in April 2020 but is not yet complete. The labour force ages 25 and older was in the third quarter last year 2 million below its level in the same quarter of 2019. Women who have no education beyond high school exited the labour force in greater numbers than similarly educated men, according to a study from the Pew Research Center.

From the third quarter of 2019 to the same quarter of 2021, the number of women in the labour force who are not high school graduates decreased 12.8% compared to 4.9% contraction among comparably educated men.

“The pandemic also disproportionately affected women with a high school diploma. The ranks of women in the high-school-educated labour force have declined 6.0% since the third quarter of 2019. The labour force of similarly educated men has fallen only 1.8%.”

Among the labour force with at least some amount of education beyond high school, women have fared at least as well as men. The number of men and women in the labour force who have some college experience but not a bachelor’s degree has contracted for both groups, with no strong disparities between the two.

Both men and women with at least a bachelor’s degree saw positive gains in the labour force (2.7% and 3.9%, respectively) from 2019 to 2021.

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Women are overrepresented in certain health care, food preparation and personal service occupations that were sharply curtailed at the start of the pandemic. Women overall are disproportionately employed in occupations that require them to work on-site and in close proximity to others.

“It is less clear whether women’s parental roles and limited child care and schooling options have played a large role in forcing them to exit the labour market. The number of mothers and fathers in the labour force has declined in similar fashion over the past two years.”

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The study shows the pandemic is not associated with a widening of the gender pay gap. Women earned 86% of what men earned in the third quarter of 2021. Two years ago, the estimated gender pay gap was 85%.

The overall pay gap partly reflects that employed women have higher levels of education than employed men. In 2021, 48% of women workers ages 25 and older had completed at least a bachelor’s degree compared with 40% of men.

The gender pay gap is greater when you look at groups of women and men with equal levels of education. The gap depends on the education level, but in 2021 women ages 25 and older earned closer to 80 cents on the dollar compared with equally educated men.

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