Jobs market pain hits men more than women as unemployment grows

Britain stands out as a poor performer in the pandemic. Infection rates and death levels have been agonisingly high; and the economy took a bigger hit than most, shrinking by just shy of 10pc over 2020 as a whole.

However, the jobs market has seemingly escaped the worst.

Unemployment in the US spiked to almost 15pc last April, up from 3.5pc in February, before the pandemic struck.

Eurozone joblessness climbed more slowly from 7.2pc in February to a peak of 8.6pc in the summer.

Britain’s rate merely edged from 4pc pre-pandemic to 5pc in November, the latest month for which data are available.

The UK also defied this trend in another way. In most other nations, women bore the brunt of job losses. An analysis by economists at Citi found that, at the peak of the first wave, female employment dropped by up to three percentage points more than male employment, across major economies.

Almost uniquely, the UK bucked this trend. Official numbers from the ONS indicate that three-quarters of the fall in employment can be accounted for by men.

So why might this be? And do the headline jobs numbers tell the whole picture?

Furlough accounts for much of the difference between Britain and the US.

Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, chose to spend big to keep people in work.

By contrast, American workers were allowed to lose their jobs, then sent extra cash directly.

This has muffled the impact on UK workers, with almost 9m jobs furloughed at the peak of the first wave.

When it comes to the gender divide, the type of work taken by men and by women varies, with significant consequences.

Men are far more likely to work for themselves. Back in February, more than 3.2m men were self-employed, compared to 1.7m women.

With no employer to offer support and often a shortage of Government aid, the number of self-employed people in the UK has plunged by more than 450,000.

By contrast women are far more likely to work for the public sector. More than three women in every 10 work for the state, almost double the 16pc share among men.

In any recession, this tends to offer more stability. In this one, it is a positive boon, because the Government has been hiring more staff, particularly in healthcare.

“Women have been a bit more likely to benefit where jobs have been created, and in particular we have seen quite significant job growth in health and public services, which are areas where women have often done better,” says Tony Wilson at the Institute for Employment Studies.

However, that does not mean women have more stable employers overall, and thus have had the ‘better’ crisis.

Women are also more likely to work part-time, and to take jobs in customer-facing services businesses that have been shut down as ‘non-essential’ retail or hospitality.

Despite the high share working in public service, more women than men are furloughed.

Research by Abi Adams-Prassl at the University of Oxford found women were around 10 percentage points more likely than men to ask to be furloughed, and are also less likely to want to return to work.

“The closure of schools has disproportionately impacted women,” her research found.

“Not only are women more likely to be employed in more affected sectors, but, even though men have increased the share of childcare that they have done through the crisis, women have picked up, at least in our data, even more.”

Women are also more likely to have suffered cuts to their pay or hours, according to Vicky Pryce, at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

“There is evidence fewer women have had their furlough pay topped up by their employer relative to men”, she says, noting that retail and hospitality businesses have run short of funds to add to their pay.

Meanwhile those who have had a chance to work from home have often suffered as school closures mean childcare is a problem, says Pryce, hitting the hours that they can work, or even undermining their ability to work altogether.

More retail jobs are being replaced with machines, either at the checkout or via online sales, harming the prospects of women at work. 

This points to the bigger divide in the workforce. Rather than being split along gender lines, the key gap may be in training levels, type of work and pay, which is most noticeable among young workers, says Stephen Evans at the Learning and Work Institute.

“Young people are more likely to have been furloughed, their unemployment claims rose more rapidly than other age groups, and those who had their education disrupted are heading out into a weaker labour market,” he says.

There are some reasons to think changes wrought by the pandemic could be beneficial in the long-term.

For instance, home-working is now more widely accepted, benefitting those who may have found it difficult to commit to full-time commuting, including mothers and disabled workers – but bad for those whose jobs rely on busy city centres.

“In the past 20 years there has been a big drive in parental leave, and the opportunity for flexible working and home working which has enabled more women to enter the labour force,” says economist Ian Stewart at Deloitte.

“If you get a step change in home working as a result of the pandemic, that potentially increases the opportunities.

“On the other hand, home-working tends to be most prevalent among higher-income groups. People in lower-paid consumer-facing service jobs cannot work from home. So there is a potential inequality there.”