- The April jobs report was a surprising miss, with the number of jobs added far lower than expected.
- Unemployment levels also increased, rather than decreasing as anticipated.
- More women dropped out of the labor force, and the report underscored the need for childcare.
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The April jobs report came as an unpleasant surprise for many, with job growth numbers far lower than expected and unemployment rising.
Nonfarm payrolls rose by just 266,000, falling short of the 1 million forecast by economists. Unemployment rose from 6.0% to 6.1% – the opposite of an expected decline to 5.8%.
The report also showed a bleaker outlook for women, who have continually shouldered a disproportionate impact from pandemic economic devastation. Women did make up the majority of nonfarm payroll jobs added, and the unemployment rate for women age 20 and over dropped by 0.1 percentage point
But according to National Women's Law Center's analysis of the latest employment figures, 165,000 women who are at least 20 years old also dropped out of the labor force from March to April for a total of 72.5 million women in the civilian labor force last month. This comes after 495,000 women age 20 and over joined the labor force in March.
Based on the chart, 355,000 men age 20 and over joined the labor force in April after three-consecutive months of exits from the labor force.
The labor force participation rate for women also dropped slightly:
The participation rate for women who are at least 20 years old dropped by 0.2 percentage points in April and is still 2 percentage points below the rate in February 2020. For men, the participation rate increased by 0.3 percentage points and is still 1.8 percentage points below the pre-pandemic rate.
Jasmine Tucker, the director of research at the National Women's Law Center, told Insider that report was "mixed" for women's employment. While they did see some gains, their unemployment rate was driven down by women exiting the labor force completely.
"If you added all of the women who've dropped out of the labor force since February 2020, the unemployment rate for women would be 8.1% instead of 5.6%," Tucker said. Unemployment is also much higher than pre-pandemic levels for Black and Latina women.
After similar unemployment rates in recent months, men's unemployment rate among those 20 years and over ticked up from 5.8% in March to 6.1% in April. Women on the other hand saw their unemployment rate drop from 5.7% to 5.6%.
There's also concern over the quality of the jobs that women are taking. Tucker said their gains were primarily in leisure and hospitality, which could be lower paid and non-unionized. The leisure and hospitality sector saw the most job gains in April, adding 331,000 jobs overall and 150,000 for women. Even prior to the pandemic, mothers - particularly mothers of color - saw a pay gap compared to fathers.
"April is still a little bit of a mystery, but I think that there is still some real concern about safety and returning to work," Tucker said.
Overall, according to NWLC calculations, it will take women 28 months to reach their pre-pandemic employment level of 76.3 million if the US were to continue to add 161,000 jobs for women each month, the current rate in April per the latest jobs report.
While the numbers took economists by surprise, they're not unexpected for some
But while the numbers may have come as a shock to some, Misty L. Heggeness, a principal economist and senior advisor at the US Census Bureau, said in an email that folks shouldn't be surprised. There's still a "virus running around in communities," causing safety concerns. Also, people don't still don't have places to safely drop their kids when they go to work.
"I think we've all been very hopeful that we're turning the corner, and we're moving forward, and that components of this pandemic - that the big principal issues of the pandemic are behind us - but I think that we need to rethink that," she told Insider in a call. "That's not true for a subset of our workforce. I think we've seen improvements until now because these have been the low hanging fruits."
We're entering a new phase, she said, which will require more effort on making work manageable for parents. That includes upping vaccinations, safely reopening schools, and creating accessible and affordable childcare options.
"[Childcare] isn't a private issue. It isn't an in the house or a family issue that doesn't need to be discussed within our larger society," Heggeness said. Rather, it's crippling people's ability to get back to work and spur economic growth - and should be treated as such.
And, as Tucker notes, over one in four women have been looking for work for a year.
"While we're reopening very expensive childcare centers, there's going to be a mismatch there of who's gonna be able to afford to go back to work," Tucker said. "We absolutely have to figure out, as a wealthy nation, where we want to put our energy and our effort - and it needs to be in childcare."