The economic recovery has picked up for women in Michigan, but with one major caveat.
Women are regaining their jobs as fast as men, unless they’re mothers.
Women with young children are not recovering as fast as their male counterparts or women without young kids.
Employment rates for women with children younger than 13 have dropped more dramatically than it has among their childless peers, and the disparity is more apparent in Michigan than it is in the U.S. as a whole, according to data from the Kalamazoo-based W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Comparing employment data from before the pandemic to the most recent figures from December 2020 and January 2021, the rate of employment has gone down for Michigan women with young kids by 9.45%.
Having young children at home appears to be less of a factor among men. During the same time frame, men with young kids saw a 7.6% drop in employment.
When young children aren’t in the mix, women are actually recovering faster than their male counterparts.
Employment among women without young kids has declined 7.25%, compared to 9.15% among men without kids.
Brad Hershbein, a senior economist with the Upjohn Institute, largely attributes the decline among working mothers to school closures, child care demands and social norms that leave women shouldering caregiver responsibilities.
(Can’t see chart? Click here.)
(Can’t see the graph? Click here)
In Grand Rapids, Alexis Macaluso had to cut her hours and rework her schedule to make up for child care usually provided by her relatives.
A mother of three, Macaluso usually relies on her mother, mother-in-law and grandmother to watch the kids while she and her husband work. When Michigan’s stay-home orders took effect last spring, she was able to work from home, but didn’t feel comfortable having her older relatives continue child care for health reasons.
While her employer was flexible with reshaping her schedule to work later or on weekends, remote schooling and keeping the kids occupied filled most of her weekdays, she said. Adding to the juggling act, Macaluso is finishing a graphic novel for publication in November, and her husband is enrolled in nursing school.
“The biggest change is figuring out how to do that and trying to focus on it while having my kids at home,” she said. “I’m just trying to find some constructive ways to keep them busy without just flopping them in front of the TV.”
In households with school aged children, 44% of women reported being the only one in the household responsible for child care, compared to 14% of men, according to a study by the Center for Economic and Social Research.
The gap persisted among working mothers, with 33% responding they were the primary caregiver, compared to only 10% of working fathers saying the same.
Related: 5 initiatives aimed at bringing women back to work in Michigan
Carolyn Cassin, president and CEO of Michigan Women Forward, said that’s a symptom of a much larger issue.
“This economy that we currently have, and the one that is hurting women so much, is partly because we never fashioned the economy around a full workforce for both men and women,” she said.
Michigan Women Forward offers microloans to female entrepreneurs. The pandemic has shed light on the balancing act women have faced for a long time, Cassin said, pointing to child care holes like school days ending before the work day, and summer break leaving working families looking for three months of care.
“Working women would have never designed this system,” she said.
Macaluso’s children are ages 10, 6 and 5. Even before the pandemic, finding and affording child care was a challenge, she said. Before she had her youngest, having two kids at daycare for three days a week cost more than their house payment, Macaluso said.
Looking at other countries’ paid leave programs, Macaluso said it feels like the U.S. doesn’t value working parents.
The U.S. is the only country among 41 nations included in a 2018 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents.
European countries range from 20 to 40 weeks of paid leave. In Japan, the full-time equivalent paid leave is 60 weeks, according to the study.
U.S. employers are required to provide 12 weeks of unpaid family leave, but there are no nationwide standards on paid family or sick leave.
“They recognize that every parent has something to contribute and might not want to stay home,” Macaluso said of other countries. “A lot of us went to school or studied a trade and want to use that skill.”
Jen Hemingway found out she was pregnant shortly after COVID-19 was first detected in Michigan. On the frontlines of the pandemic, she managed a grocery store in her small town of Marlette in Michigan’s Thumb region.
She worked throughout the toilet paper hoarding and hand sanitizer craze, calling it “ground zero.” In September, she got a job in her desired field of physical therapy, finally getting to put her degree in exercise science to use.
She had every intention of returning to work after six weeks of maternity leave, but the anxiety of new motherhood and the pandemic overlapped, and she felt it was impossible to leave her daughter.
“It’s already hard enough to find somebody to trust and then there’s a pandemic on top of it,” she said.
She and her husband tried to work out the logistics. He has a 40-minute commute and often works 12-hour days. With one car between them, it would be difficult to find or afford a child care center that could watch their daughter for the entirety of his shift.
Prior to the pandemic, Michigan was already seeing a decline in child care providers. Since 2010, the number of child care slots in Michigan has declined 2.5 percent, according to a 2019 report from the Michigan Department of Education.
Related: Michigan launches child care pilot splitting cost between family, business and government
In April, the Center for American Progress estimated that as many as 4.5 million child care slots nationwide could be permanently lost due to the pandemic.
In Michigan, that would translate to an estimated 41% decrease in child care availability, according to Center for American Progress child care deserts data.
Hemingway still misses her job, but the sacrifices she would make for her daughter are “limitless,” she said. She describes herself as a busybody. Leaving the workforce was already an adjustment, but the pandemic has taken away playdates and social events as well, she said.
She, too, places the blame on an institutional lack of resources for working parents, especially mothers.
“America has really dropped the ball,” she said. “In the face of a pandemic, women are the ones who are quitting their jobs and having to automatically fill that 1950s role of being the homemaker.”
Related: Gender pay gap worse in Michigan than nationwide disparity
Child care has become the No. 1 priority in efforts to bring women back into the workforce, Michigan Women’s Commission CEO Cheryl Bergman said.
During the fall, the Michigan Women’s Commission surveyed 642 respondents about child care during the pandemic. Survey results found that 37.5% of child care was now happening at home.
While 21% of respondents said working remotely aided with child care at home, 45% said that if given the option, they would like child care to be at a center after the pandemic.
Three nonprofits have been selected for a tri-care child care pilot program through the commission. Families, employers and the state will split child care costs for one year.
Additionally, the commission partnered with the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration to bring child care centers into the MIOSHA ambassador program for COVID-19 safety checks that are tied to grants for safe re-openings.
In her budget proposal, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proposed expanding the current child care subsidy program to qualifying families making up to 200% of the poverty line through September 2022. This would add an estimated 150,000 families. The proposal would need to be approved as part of the state budget process, with support from the Republican-led Legislature.
More on MLive:
Gender pay gap worse in Michigan than nationwide disparity
YWCA in Kalamazoo creates ‘career pathway’ to staff 24-hour child care center
150k Michigan families would be eligible for child care subsidies under Whitmer’s budget
Michigan unemployment rate drops – but largely because people gave up looking for work
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