Women Trail in U.S. Employment Gains as Governments Cut
By Jeanna Smialek - Feb 27, 2013 12:01 AM ET
After eight years as a guidance counselor at Scotts Valley High School and more than 14 years with the district in Santa Cruz County, California, Kimberly Frey says she lost her job in June as part of budget cuts.
Since then, she has forgone health insurance and sold her car to save money while looking for similar guidance work, with no options in sight. “It’s really dried up for school counselors here,” she said. “It’s very discouraging.”
Frey’s situation reflects a trend in which women in the U.S. have been losing the government jobs they dominate even as the private sector has added positions.
Women have lost 454,000 federal, state and local government jobs compared with 267,000 by men since the 18-month recession ended in June 2009, Bureau of Labor Statistics records indicate.
The gap has widened in the past year even as government job losses have slowed. Government payrolls cut about five times as many women as men in 2012 and the pattern is continuing. In January, women surrendered 8,000 positions compared with 1,000 for men.
State and local governments have done the majority of firing as their revenues plummeted, and are poised for a rebound as the economy picks up. Yet the imbalance could persist if Congress doesn’t avert automatic federal spending reductions slated to begin March 1, said Harry Holzer, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington and former chief economist at the Department of Labor.
The reductions, known as sequestration, will trim growth by 0.5 percentage point this year and wipe out 350,000 jobs if they take effect on schedule and remain in place through December, according to the median forecast of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg last week.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-27/women-trail-in-u-s-employment-gains-as-governments-cut.html
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