According to The Associated Press, December was another month with slow job growth and little progress in women’s re-entry into the labour force during the coronavirus pandemic. National Women’s Law Center. 

Only 199,000 additional jobs were created in December by the economy. Women accounted for 24%. The Bureau of Statistics estimates that 321,000 females entered the labor market last month. Accordingly to them, the participation rate in women’s labor forces has increased to 57.8% (from 57.5%), latest jobs report. 

Julie Vogtman is the Director of Job Quality and Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. She says, “There are certain positive signs in this month’s report.” CNBC Make It. “More women seek work and the wages are increasing, but the omicron variant will disrupt or reverse this trend in the next months. 

Vogtman attributes women participating in the labour force’s rise to school re-openings and increased hiring before the new year. However, this latest report doesn’t reflect all the effects of the omicron variation, she says. 

There was a drop in unemployment for several groups last month. This included white women (from 3.7% to 3.1%), Latinas (from 5.3% to 4.9%), and Asian women (from 3.9% to 3.3%). Black women’s unemployment rose to 6.2% last month from 4.9%. 

Both job loss and new labor force entry can explain this increase. In December, most job gains went to white women – 538,000 more women were employed in December 2021 than in November, and of those women, 463,000 were white. Black women lost 8,000 jobs.

In December, more than 140,000 Black women entered the workforce to find work. However, they were not offered open jobs. For example, the leisure and hospitality sector created 53,000 jobs in December – and while men gained 57,000 positions, women lost 4,000 jobs, despite making up about 53% of the workforce. 

In December 2017, 700 jobs were created in retail by men, but none for women. Vogtman says that black women in these two industries are highly represented and therefore “bore the brunt of” these losses. The NWLC projects that the recovery of the almost 2 million lost jobs by women during the pandemic will take approximately 45 months at December’s rates.

Vogtman claims that the job market has devalued women and women of color’s efforts. The service sectors that women of color hold are the most vulnerable and worst-affected by the pandemic. 

Jasmine Tucker (director of research at the NWLC), stated that “Black women continue to face discrimination, other barriers, and they tend be overrepresented in sectors that don’t provide competitive pay or benefits such as retail or hospitality jobs. So there’s unwillingness for them to accept a low-paid job with basic benefits like sick leave as the pandemic persists.” told CNBC Make ItIn December

In November, 34.2 percent of women unemployed were older than 60 and had not worked for six months. Vogtman is concerned that the number of women who are unemployed could rise as new viruses spread. However, hiring managers can help to reduce the barriers keeping them from getting work. 

Offering employees higher wages and more paid sick leave would be a great start – but flexible work schedules could be a “game-changer” for keeping women in the workforce, and enticing more to return, Vogtman notes, as it could help them better manage caregiving responsibilities.

“The Pandemic created a vicious circle of instability, unpredictability and insecurity in people’s life,” she said. “All women can depend on are the hours they work and their weekly paychecks.

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