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Recession: More women stepping up as breadwinners

2 min read

In June, 970,000 Floridians were without jobs, or 10.6 percent unemployment. That is the state’s highest since 1975, according to the Agency for Workforce Innovation.

Because traditionally male-dominated professions such as construction and manufacturing have been particularly hard-hit during the recession, in Florida and across the country far more men have lost jobs than women. In some homes, this situation is reversing the roles of family breadwinner, even though women make only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Dr. Ira Wolfe, a workforce trends expert and author of “The Perfect Labor Storm,” says these are more cases of a workforce trend that started before the economy went bust.

“That shift already happened. What the recession did, certainly, was accelerate what had been predicted for years. The male participation rate in the workforce is declining, and the female participation rate is climbing.”

The situation is a challenge for laid-off workers, Wolfe says.

“It doesn’t mean that construction workers and manufacturing workers aren’t capable of retraining, but it’s certainly a different set of job skills they need to learn.”

Wolfe says a recent study of the workforce from the National Center for Education Statistics showed an average of 14 percent lacked basic literacy skills.

“There’s a huge, huge literacy gap in our economy. People who might be leaving industries and retraining aren’t just learning a new industry, but also may have to bring up their literacy skills.”

In the early 2000s, about 75 percent of women between 18 and 45 were employed outside the home, Wolfe says, but now females hold a record 49.8 per cent of all payroll jobs. Numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor show nearly three out of four jobs lost since the recession began belonged to men.

Source: Florida News Connection