The labor market has largely recovered since the COVID-19 outbreak, but gender gaps still exist.

The labor force participation rate for women in their prime working years (ages 24-54) hit a record high of 78.1% in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a percentage point higher than the pre-COVID rate. But women’s participation fell to 77.9% the following month, while men’s participation rose.

While it may seem like an isolated incident at first, researchers say the swing is actually part of a longer-standing pattern: Women’s labor force participation typically declines in the summer, while men’s participation rate remains roughly constant.

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that during the summer months between May and July, women’s labor force participation fell by an average of 1.1% between 1989 and 2019. That’s nearly a third of the decline in prime-age women’s employment during the Great Recession.

The researchers attribute this shift to increased demands at home. School closures, combined with the lack of affordable childcare options, are pulling parents out of the workplace and into the role of caregiver, a responsibility that falls disproportionately on mothers.

This summer decline often disappears in the seasonal adjustment, but the unadjusted data show a clear pattern.

“This was a pattern that was hidden from the eye,” said Melanie Wasserman, an assistant professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a co-author of the NBER paper. “This is something that is visually apparent just by staring at the non-seasonally adjusted data, which is remarkable.”

Care requirements

Data collected since 1994 from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey showed that “caring for the home or family” was the main explanation for the decline in labor force participation among prime-age women, particularly mothers of school-age children during the summer.

“It’s really hard to make the same advancement in the workplace as your male colleagues when you’re essentially working a second or third shift at home and taking care of your family when you’re not at work,” said Misty Heggeness, an associate professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Kansas.

Demand for care is higher for people with young children. Mothers with children under 5 had much lower participation rates in May than mothers with older children, the Brookings Institution found. And women without children had the highest overall participation rates, which fluctuated little over the summer.

The story continues

This seasonal decline in women’s employment and hours translates into an estimated 3.3% loss in weekly earnings during the summer months, the NBER paper found. This decline is five times larger than the decline experienced by men during the same period.

Women are more likely to stop working in the summer than men in all sectors. But part of the decline can be explained by the tendency of women to choose jobs in the education sector, often because of the flexibility these jobs offer.

In other words, women with children may choose a career in teaching because of the flexible summer schedules, even at the expense of salary.

“(This phenomenon) is the result of a long-standing feature of the American educational system,” Wasserman said. “And so it’s kind of embedded (and) deeply ingrained in our society.”

Ruling on working from home still not known

The rise of remote and hybrid work during the pandemic has opened up more flexible options for parents. But it’s not yet clear whether remote work will lead to fairer work arrangements.

“On the one hand, you provide more flexibility so both parents can potentially play a more involved role,” Olga Stoddard, an associate professor at Brigham Young University, told Yahoo Finance.

“But on the other hand, you still have these really strong gender biases and gender norms about who should be taking on the more dominant role with regard to children or households,” she added. “And so allowing women to work from home could exacerbate some of these existing disparities rather than improve them. And so I think it’s still not clear whether that’s a positive or negative development.”

Even when women work from home, they experience more disruptions from their children and school during the day.

A recent paper found that in two-parent families, with a mother and a father, schools contacted mothers more often than fathers. This was true even when the school had obtained contact information for both parents and the father was the one who made the initial contact.

“We’re doubling down on these signals,” Stoddard said. “The household is sending a very explicit message that, look, the father wants to be involved, wants to be the go-to person, and yet the executives continue to fall back on some kind of gender norm.”

These interruptions to the workday can have long-lasting consequences for careers. The NBER report found that interruptions related to children led women to choose careers that offered more flexibility and shorter commutes, but fewer paychecks or promotion opportunities.

“(Women are) not necessarily at the table when the next opportunity to lead a project comes up, and missing out on leading that project could mean missing out on the next promotion,” Heggeness said. “Inequality at home may not seem related to inequality in the workplace, but it is directly and deeply related to inequalities in the workplace today.”

While the US has made great strides in addressing these disparities, Heggeness stressed that data on working-age parents can be improved. In particular, she emphasized the need for more detailed data, including parental status and the presence of caregiving burden.

She added that the monthly jobs report, seen as a key insight into the labor market, does not give the full picture of employment and can lead to “wrong conclusions.”

“I absolutely don’t think the current statistics are sufficient to really help us understand what’s happening to parents in today’s economy and in today’s labor market, or what’s happening to caregivers,” Heggeness said. “In terms of really helping us understand the dynamics of how individuals and families thrive, it’s not enough.”

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