The COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every American, but as we move into the latter half of the pandemic in 2022, the exact effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on particular demographics is not completely understood. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we were flooded with news stories indicating that mothers have been forced to leave or, at the very least, changed jobs to care for children and other family members. Vice President Kamala Harris even publicly spoke about seeing this uptick in mothers exiting the labor force as a “National Emergency.” As the pandemic has progressed, however, news outlets have slowly begun releasing stories similar to the New York Times story titled, “The Pandemic Has Been Punishing for Working Mothers. But Mostly They’ve Kept Working.” The research I performed for my senior thesis set out to determine which of these two story lines is reflected by the real data of the United States labor force. Did mothers exit the labor force or change jobs at a higher rate than non-mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic?
In the past it has been well-researched and established that mothers demonstrate higher job mobility than their non-mother counterparts, and this difference is even more pronounced when mothers with children under the age of 6 are observed. At the spark of the COVID-19 pandemic the United States Census Bureau reported that just between March and April of 2020 3.5 million mothers exited the labor force, and this number increased by 1.4 million when compared to the same time frame of 2019.
Using data collected by the Current Population Survey, I performed 2 separate analyses in an attempt to answer the question initially set out for my senior thesis. To do this I aggregated the data together for before and during the pandemic, and analyzed the job leave and change rates of mothers and non-mothers. I found that with all of this data aggregated together, there was no significant difference in labor force exit and job change rates in mothers when compared to non-mothers.
Labor Force Exit And Job Change
*Pre-Pandemic = March 2018-February 2020, Pandemic = March 2020-March 2022
When looking at this graph of the final results of my analysis, we see that non-mothers are actually observed as changing jobs or exiting the labor force at a higher rate than non-mothers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a subsequent analysis controlling for other explanatory variables similar results were found, leading to a rejection of the original hypothesis that mothers would show a higher increase in job leaving and job changing during the COVID-19 pandemic when compared to non-mothers.
It is possible, however, that this data used in this analysis included some mothers who were leaving and changing jobs due to the necessity of caring for children. The results showed that during the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of children a female has increased, so did the rate of job change and job leaving. The data included several observations of mothers with larger numbers of children who may have left the labor force due to necessity, but there was most likely another group of mothers in the dataset. Due to the financial struggles the COVID-19 pandemic caused, several other mothers may have had to stay at their jobs to provide for their families. When all of these observations aggregated together, the data showed no significant increase in job change and job leaving during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regardless of what news stories we refer to as discussing the true story of mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems they all have one thing in common – Mothers were adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of childcare that was a prominent issue during it. To better understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on working mothers, further research requires a more disaggregated approach when determining this relationship.
Alexandra Klemme is a graduating senior at Indiana University studying Policy Analysis in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs with a Minor in Economics. Alexandra participates in Indiana University Conduct Board and tutoring of other undergraduate students. After graduation from Indiana University, Alexandra plans to attend law school.
Leave a Reply