Mothers hit hard by latest downturn

NEW YORK | They’ve called it the “mancession,” a recession that’s affected men disproportionately, because of its brutal impact on male-dominated sectors like construction and manufacturing.

But that term rings hollow to women like Sara Wade, an Illinois schoolteacher who became the sole supporter of two school-aged children — possibly for good, she fears — when her former husband, a carpenter and contractor, stopped paying child support 15 months ago.

Or to Martha Gonzalez, a divorced mother of three in Texas who had to take a second, part-time job when her work in real estate became scarcer. She lost her benefits, too, and for the first time in her adult working life, has no health insurance.

Or to Angela Grice, single mom of a 3-year-old son, who cobbles together two low-paying, part-time jobs while she tries to get an accounting degree that will lead to some stability for her and her son.

Concerned about women like these, a congressional committee issued a report, timed for Mother’s Day, outlining the adverse impact the recession has had on working women — especially on mothers, and particularly single moms. A copy was provided to the Associated Press ahead of its Monday release.

Strikingly, the report, by the Joint Economic Committee, finds that whereas during the bulk of the recession job losses were overwhelmingly male, as the economy edged toward recovery, the trend began reversing.

“As job losses slowed in the final months of 2009, women continued to lose jobs as men found employment,” says the report, based on the committee’s analysis of unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Specifically, from October 2009 to March 2010, women lost 22,000 jobs while men gained 260,000, it says. “And April’s strong employment growth showed women gained 86,000 jobs last month, far fewer than the 204,000 jobs gained by men,” it says.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, New York Democrat and chairman of the committee, noted that the findings were especially dire for single mothers: Their unemployment rate went from 8 percent to 13 percent between 2007 and 2009.

“Women are losing more jobs, yet families are more dependent on their earnings,” she said in a telephone interview.

In all, one-third of jobs lost during this recession belonged to women, Mrs. Maloney notes. That’s striking, she said, because in earlier recessions the percentage was much lower; women accounted for 15 percent of job losses in the 2001 recession, for example.

But even women who’ve been able to hold onto their jobs have found the economic sands shifting beneath them in ways they never anticipated.

Mrs. Wade, the Illinois schoolteacher, counts herself among the luckier ones. An 8th-grade English teacher in Skokie for 16 years, she’s fortunate to have tenure and seniority. (She thanks her lucky stars she didn’t take an extended break from her career earlier on, as she once contemplated.)

Her husband, whom she divorced in 2004, is a carpenter and contractor, “just the kind of job they mean when the call it a ’mancession,’” she said. But the term seems meaningless because the impact of his job troubles has put her in a risky position she never imagined: the sole source of economic support for their 8-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl.

Mrs. Wade, who has had no child support since January of 2009, bought a new home with the help of her family.

“I can’t imagine what I’d be living in if they hadn’t helped me out,” she said. She also has worried about a potential pay freeze at her school.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I’m the sole provider and I could be stuck here at this level.” She reluctantly assumes she’ll have to support her children through college on her own.

There are many like Mrs. Wade, and they are in a precarious position, said her district’s congresswoman, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat. “If a person like her loses her job, she is in deep trouble,” said Mrs. Schakowsky, chairman of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, who also spoke to AP about the report. “The house will probably follow.”

In earlier times, women served as a buffer during recessions. If the husband lost his job, the wife could serve as a backup provider. The frightening thing for women who are the sole breadwinners is that there’s no backup plan, said fellow Women’s Caucus member Gwen Moore, Wisconsin Democrat.

“We have no safety net for these women,” said Mrs. Moore. “Eight million women are the sole breadwinners in their family, and public policy needs to be a little more empathetic to this. Because when a woman loses her job, the whole family falls off a huge cliff.”