Happy Women's Day: Single Moms Take Biggest Unemployment Hit

[Triana]

Men May Have It Bad, But Unemployment Statistics Obscure the Hit Taken By Single Moms
Break down today's unemployment stats, and it looks like women are faring much better than men in the great recession.
That is, unless they're single and raising kids.

March 4, 2010


Much has been made of the fact that, when examined through the prism of gender, the Great Recession appears to have affected the employment of men far more than that of women. And, taken as a whole, that's true. According to figures released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for men (age 20 and over) stands at 10 percent, while 7.9 percent of women rank among the unemployed. (When the recession began in December 2007, the unemployment rate among men and women was the same: 4.4 percent.)

But spend some time rummaging among the unemployment statistics, and you'll find a significant group of women struggling mightily against a brutal economic tide: single women with children. They, the breadwinners of their families, are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than married women who have a spouse present. While this has been true for the last ten years (PDF), its effects are amplified in the current economic crisis.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a report released on Friday, showed the unemployment rate for married women at 6.1 percent, while that of single women "who maintain families," in the parlance of the BLS, reached a whopping 11.6 percent -- 68 percent higher than when the recession began. Add to that the fact that women, as a whole, earn only 77 cents for every dollar a man brings home, and you find many single women whose situation has gone from difficult to dire.

• • • 

he differences in unemployment between married and unmarried women may in part reflect other demographics that come into play in unemployment rates, in that women (and men) who are unmarried tend to be younger, have less education, and are more racially and ethnically diverse than married women (and men)."


MORE...

http://www.alternet.org/economy/145918/men_may_have_it_bad%2C_but_unemployment_statistics_obscure_the_hit_taken_by_single_moms

[Robb]

1. How did single men raising kids fare? nt