8/7/2019 Women Bearing Brunt of Job Cuts as U.S. States Balance Budgets

1/2

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Generated at: 01:41PM 04/06/2011 EDT

Enlarge

Related Agency:

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Related States:

State of WisconsinState of New JerseyState of OhioState of Indiana

Related People:

Wisconsin Governor Scott WalkerNew Jersey Governor Chris ChristieOhio Governor John KasichIndiana Governor Mitch Daniels

Women Bearing Brunt of Job Cuts as U.S. States Balance Budgets

By Esm E. Deprez and Holly Rosenkrantz | April 06, 2011 12:01AM ET

(Bloomberg) -- For Dawn Willis, an unemployed social studies teacher in Jackson, New Jersey, the recession that ended in June 2009 isnt over.

I find it hard to believe were in a recovery, Willis, 39, said in an interview in the home she bought 14 months before losing her job to budget cuts. I reallydont feel like that. Im not seeing it.

Women-dominated fields such as teaching and home health care are in the

crosshairs as governors cut education and social services to resolve budget

deficits that may total $112 billion in the coming fiscal year. Females have

already lost 72 percent of the 378,000 federal, state and local government jobs

eliminated from July 2009 to March, according to Labor Department data

compiled by Bloomberg.

Men lost the most jobs during the recession, which began in December 2007.

Since its end, women have been faring worse. Taking private-sector gains into

account, women have a net loss of 212,000 jobs from July 2009 through last

month, Labor Department data show. Men added 757,000 jobs in that time.

Womens employment continues to lag in this recovery and thats largely being

driven by the substantial cutbacks in public-sector jobs where womenpredominate, Joan Entmacher, vice president at the National Womens Law

Center in Washington, said in a telephone interview. Theyll take the biggest hit

as lawmakers demand concessions from public workers and seek curbs to

collective bargaining, she said.

Wrecking Ball

Last month, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder stripped collective bargaining rights

from home-based child-care workers, 94 percent of whom are female. A law

championed by fellow Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, which

has been challenged in court, curtailed collective bargaining for teachers, and

revoked them for University of Wisconsin hospital and home health aides and

day-care providers. Firefighters and police are exempt. They are 98 percent and

81 percent male, respectively.

They are taking a wrecking ball to what have traditionally been female-dominated professions, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation ofTeachers, said in an interview. It feels like all that weve learned about competitive marketplaces and how women should be able to compete fairly in the

marketplace -- all of that has gone backward.

Toughest Yet

By limiting salary costs, the union laws will forestall dismissals and tax increases, saving money as revenue

lags behind pre-recession levels, said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a

Washington research group that advocate limits on labor power. That helps both sexes, she said.

The current system is unsustainable, said Furchtgott- Roth, who was chief economist at the Labor

Department under President George W. Bush, and co-wrote The Feminist Dilemma: When Success is Not

Enough.

Women are the winners in all this, she said.

This will be the toughest year yet for local governments, Moodys Investors Service said in a March 16 report.

Municipal revenue is running below 2008 levels, even as pension, health care and operations costs rise,Moodys said.

Local government has the highest concentration of female workers of any public sector, at 62 percent. Females

compose 57 percent of federal, state and local government workers, Labor Department data show.

Closing the Gap

Many public-sector occupations such as teaching and nursing are female-dominated in part because they were the caring professions, and also in part

because they didnt pay as much, and so men didnt jump to them first, said Amy B. Dean of Chicago, a former AFL-CIO official who co-authored A New New

Deal, a book about reshaping the labor movement.

Gutting collective bargaining threatens to bleed unions of cash and power. That jeopardizes benefits such as flexible work hours and maternity leave, and the

progress thats been made in closing the gender wage gap, according to Entmacher of the National Womens Law Center.

In 2010, female union members earned 89 cents for every dollar their male counterparts did, according to the Labor Department. Non-unionized women made

81 cents on the dollar.

Willis, the New Jersey teacher, said that after eight years in the classroom, shes considering switching careers. Shes the first in her family to graduate from

college, an act her father discouraged because a womans place is in the home.

Feeding the Dogs

8/7/2019 Women Bearing Brunt of Job Cuts as U.S. States Balance Budgets

2/2

2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. All Rights Reserved.

Willis grew up dirt poor in Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, and is also the familys first to own a home. She said shes petrified shell lose that, too.

When bill collectors ask whether theres anyone she can borrow from, she explains shes the sole breadwinner for herself and her three dogs, Penelope,

Calypso, and Athena.

Ive always been very optimistic, but now Im starting to swing the other way, she said.

Her field has been a target. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed reducing the citys 75,000 educators by 6,166, including 4,666 dismissals.

Thats even before Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomos budget cuts aid to school districts by about $1.25 billion. The mayor is founder and majority owner

of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Republican Ohio Governor John Kasichs spending plan would cost 7,000 teachers their jobs, according to Innovation Ohio, a Columbus group that lobbies for

the poor and middle class.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, has cut school aid by $1.3 billion since taking office in January 2010. Eighty percent of districts have

reduced the number of teachers this academic year, according to Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Vicious Cycle

Public education is dominated by women, who made up about 76 percent of teachers in the 2007-08 school year, according to the Department of Education.

Its a vicious cycle, because if you lay off schoolteachers, then that means after-school programs are gone too, Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center

for American Progress in Washington, said in a telephone interview. Women, who are more likely to head single-parent households, she said, will be caught in

a bind as the social services they rely on become targets for cutbacks, too.

The 2011-2013 budget proposed by Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, calls for $4.1 billion in cuts, including a suspension of wage

increases for teachers and a reduction in maternity care services for high-risk mothers and children.

Rachel Ragatz was dismissed from her first full-time job at a landscape architecture firm in Sacramento, California, in January 2008. She was one of five

people, all women, to see their jobs eliminated as long-term construction dried up.

The 27-year old, who will soon begin a doctorate in civil engineering, brings home a quarter the pay she did before, she said in a telephone interview from

Davis.

Thats stalled her plans to wed and start a family, she said. It feels like a steep slope just got steeper.

To contact the reporters on this story: Esm E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net; Holly Rosenkrantz in Washington at

hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net.

IMPACT

Action

Fields dominated by women, such as teaching and home health care, are targets as governors cut education and social services.

Cost

Governors are facing budget deficits that may total $112 billion in the coming fiscal year. Local government, where revenue is running below 2008 levels, hasthe highest concentration of female workers in the public sector.

Winners or LosersWomen are 57 percent of government workers and lost 72 percent of the 378,000 government jobs eliminated from July 2009 through March. Women whoare in unions earn 34 percent more than those who aren't.

Outcome

While men lost the majority of jobs during the recession, they have been regaining work more rapidly than women since the recovery began.