COVID-19 forced women to leave their jobs. Can California help them get back to work?

By Jeong Park, Hannah Wiley, and Kim Bojorquez

Stacy Lynn Vasquez sits in her shuttle bus which she is converting to a RV for a cross county trip after being laid-off from her job selling motor homes in Manteca. Photographed at her home in Modesto, Calif., on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. Andy Alfaro aalfaro@modbee.com

In nearly every major recession, more men lost jobs than women.

But the coronavirus outbreak is an exception. The pandemic and stay-at-home orders decimated industries such as hospitality that had employed a large number of women. Thousands more working mothers quit their job or reduced their working hours to care for their children as schools went online.

All over the state, women are making difficult choices about what kind of job they want to do when the pandemic ends.

When I think about having to go get a minimum wage job, I just dont want to do that, said Stacy Lynn Vasquez, 53 in Modesto, who lost her job selling motor homes and trailers in Manteca.

Experts and advocates fear the pandemic could force women like Vasquez to take lower-quality jobs, exacerbating the gender pay gap and wiping out gains the state has made over the last few decades narrowing pay disparities between men and women.

I feel like all of the gains working moms, working women have made in the last 20 years is just gone, said Sen. Connie Levya, a Chino Democrat and chair of the Legislative Womens Caucus, who has sponsored laws aimed at compelling companies to provide better-paying opportunities for women. It just goes to show that women are still second-class citizens when it comes to work.

Women leaving workforce

Until the pandemic, fewer men and more women had sought work over the last few decades, reflecting changing attitudes on work and growth in industries such as healthcare and retail that employ a large share of female workers.

The number ticked up for women especially in 2018 and 2019, when California had a very low unemployment rate. In a tight labor market, more women start looking for jobs because they have more and better opportunities, said Alissa Anderson, a senior policy analyst at the California Budget & Policy Center.

Yet, as of September, about 5% of women who were in the states labor force in December are unemployed and no longer looking for work, compared to about 2% of the men, according to an analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California.

Its the first recession where weve seen a greater job loss for women than for men, Anderson said.

Anderson said many women work in jobs that rely on face-to-face interactions, from touching customers nail at a salon to greeting visitors at a hotel front desk. Leisure and hospitality industry in California alone lost nearly 30% of its jobs since February, according to data from the states Employment Development Department. (Links to an external site.)

Those loss of jobs especially hit women of color. Nearly 30% of Latinas in California lost their jobs between March and May 2020, compared to 9.4% for white women, according to a report by the Los Angeles based-Hispanas Organized for Political Equality. (Links to an external site.)

Undocumented Latinas experienced the highest rate of job loss over 36% because of the industries that were hit so hard, said Los Angeles Sen. Maria Elena Durazo.

Meanwhile, some working women who havent gotten laid off have left work because of their struggle with childcare as schools shifted to online learning.

A recent national survey of companies (Links to an external site.) found 18% of working mothers have considered leaving the workforce since the start of the pandemic, compared to 11% of working fathers.

Consequences of losing their job or leaving the workforce can be long-lasting for the states working women.

Women in ages 21 to 50 who lost stable jobs from mid-sized or large companies can miss out on more than $100,000 in lifetime earnings (Links to an external site.), according to a paper from Till von Wachter, a professor of economics at UCLA and faculty director of the California Policy Lab.

You hope people can reenter, and it may not be a problem, Julien Lafortune, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. But on the other hand, reentering imposes a real cost.

Childcare, online school pull parents home

Both Marcella Pelz and her husband work full-time, and have had to juggle their schedules to make sure their first grader son Jonah is logging on to all his classes online.

Navigating work and navigating my sons schedule at school, its been challenging, said Pelz, a Sacramento resident who serves as a director at Bayside Church Midtown.

Being able to hire a sitter who comes to the house and watch her son for four or five hours every day has been critical, she said.

Otherwise, I think Id have to quit my job, she said.

Some women have not been as fortunate.

One Atascadero mom said she quit her job at a grocery store after her daughters school went online. She has until the end of the year to go back to her job she had worked for years. She spoke on the condition that she not be named because she is afraid of the store pulling back the offer.

Because her daughter does distance learning from 12:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m., the only option for her would be to work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. The schedule might not be feasible given her husband also works full-time and is never home, she said.

We just didnt have any option for childcare, she said. We have a 10-year-old, so we can leave home a little bit, but not all day.

Others said they simply didnt know if there are good jobs available for them.

In March, Vasquez of Modesto lost her job that she thought she would hold onto until retirement.

I was totally blindsided, she said. I was just devastated.

She thought about finding a new job, but she doesnt know if she can find work better than those that pay her more than $13 an hour.

She doesnt have savings, but she has traded her car for a shuttle bus for a life on the road. She plans to leave Modesto by the end of the year, first driving cross-country to North Carolina where she has a friend there.

Its probably not the normal way of thinking but I made it this far. Ill make it, she said. I feel like Im at an endgame because of my age.

What can the state do?

Sen. Leyva, a Chino Democrat and chair of the Legislative Womens Caucus, anticipates a sluggish economic recovery.

Part of the rebuilding process, which she said could take a decade, is making sure women have access to higher-paying jobs. Childcare workers deserve good-paying, living-wage jobs, Leyva said, along with service workers in the hotel and hospitality industries.

Until women of every color and nationality are paid equally to their male counterparts, Leyva said, every time theres a tragic event, women will be the ones to get the short end of the stick.

Durazo also said the state has to do more than looking at pay inequity, especially for Latinas who have been hit hard by the pandemic. We have to look out for the workplace protections.

Leyva said another area of top legislative concern will be strengthening childcare options for women during the pandemic. Over 5,600 childcare providers have closed in the state, according to Child Care Providers United, a union representing them. (Links to an external site.)

The union said its providers have seen their expenses increase by up to 75%, as they buy sanitation products for their facilities and support distance learning for children whose parents work.

Levya said shes ready to fight for more childcare funding, with the hope to expand the number of slots - thousands of which she said are needed - for more families.

How does mom go to work if theres no place to safely and affordably take her child?, Leyva said. We are going to fight for our fair share of funding.

The Bees Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks contributed to this story.

This story was written and reported by The Sacramento Bee's Equity Lab, a community-funded journalism team exploring issues of equity, wealth, race, power and justice in the region. Click here for more stories and to support The Equity Lab. (Links to an external site.)

YOUR TASKS

Please write a two page memorandum, in narrative form, that responds the following questions. Be thorough in your response.

How significant do you think this situation is, where more women have lost employment than men?

Were you aware of this situation before you read the story?

What do you think the state should be doing, if anything, about the situation? Do you think there should be a national response to the situation? Why or why not?

What are the implications of women losing employment? What do you think are the most significant consequences of this phenomena?