Gender Gap Narrows for Living Wage Jobs, Reports Ludwig Institute

Female workers close the employment gap to shortest recorded by LISEP

November 15, 2023

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While the overall availability of living-wage jobs remained virtually unchanged, women in the workforce gained ground against their male counterparts in October, according to the monthly True Rate of Unemployment (TRU) report by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP).

The overall TRU — a measure of the“functionally unemployed,” defined as the jobless plus those seeking, but unable to find, full-time employment paying above the poverty line — improved slightly, from 22.8% to 22.7%. While most demographic groups saw similar negligible changes, women workers saw a notable improvement: the female TRU decreased 0.6 percentage points, improving from 27.4% to 26.8%. This, coupled with the male TRU increasing by 0.5 percentage points (from 18.5% to 19%), has narrowed the gender gap to 7.8 percentage points, compared to 8.9 percentage points in September.

This is the second lowest TRU for women dating back to 1995 (the earliest LISEP has records), surpassed only by the 26.4% TRU posted in June of this year. The female TRU has been at or near its lowest level since the start of 2022, with the ten lowest values ever recorded all occurring during that time.

“An improvement in the status of women workers is welcome news, and it is encouraging to see that steady progress has been made in just this past year,” said LISEP Chairman Gene Ludwig. “But I think we all can agree that a functional unemployment rate of 26.8% for women is too high; a gender gap of nearly 8% is too large. Considering that most family households require two earners just to make ends meet, the continued reduction of barriers to women in the workforce should be a top priority for policymakers.”

Functional unemployment for the three racial and ethnic demographic groups in the LISEP report increased slightly, with the TRU for Black workers increasing by 0.1 percentage points (from 25.1% to 25.2%); 0.3 percentage points for Hispanic workers (26.0% to 26.3%), and 0.1 percentage point for White workers (21.5% to 21.6%).

“Middle- and working-class earners are basically holding their own, but holding the status quo is not good enough,” Ludwig said. "We are still seeing too many families struggling to get by. We can appreciate progress where we see it, but we still must recognize that we can do better.”

Gender Gap Narrows for Living Wage Jobs, Reports Ludwig Institute

Female workers close the employment gap to shortest recorded by LISEP

‍Jim Gardner

November 15, 2023

For Immediate Release

Additional Resources

Historically, systemic barriers have disproportionately hampered Black farmers’ ability to retain land ownership.

Despite this tragic history, there is still time and economic incentive to set some of the inequities right.

In 2021, working mothers with children under 18 earned just 61.7 cents for every dollar a father made. Much wider than the overall gender wage gap, this difference highlights both the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium.

Female-dominated, low-paying, part-time occupations are overrepresented among informal workers who also have a formal job.

We need to create an economic environment where companies can hire these workers as employees and pay them a living wage. There are steps policymakers can take to change the gig economy dynamic.

Dependency on tips over base pay is growing because of actions taken by gig companies to institute tipping.

Even for those lucky enough to be making what amounts in many states to the poverty wage of $15 per hour, many will get nothing but a week’s notice before being out on the street.

One study shows that consistent involvement in extracurricular activities increased a child’s likelihood of attending college by a whopping 400% compared to not being involved at all.

Studies have found that both men and women are paid less if they work in “nurturant” occupations.

Since 2015, the correlation between LISEP’s functional employment to population ratio and the inflation rate was more than four times as strong as the BLS’s employment to population ratio, which is depicted in the graph below.

The employment to population ratio settles the discrepancy between what we see around us and what the data says.

The NBER paper defines employment using the traditional BLS U-3 rate. However, the often-used U-3 number fails to capture the quality of jobs.

Among states with stricter COVID-19 policies, reducing unemployment benefits had little to no effect. The average effect of increased employment seems to have occurred only in those states with looser COVID protocols.

Press Contact:

‍Jim Gardner

press@lisep.org

(573) 680-1822

Additional Resources:

TRU Summary

TRU White Paper

TRU & TWE Methodology

TRU & TWE Source Data

About TRU

LISEP issued the white paper Measuring Better: Development of “True Rate of Unemployment” Data as the Basis for Social and Economic Policy upon announcing the new statistical measure in October 2020. The paper and methodology can be viewed here. LISEP issues TRU one to two weeks following the release of the BLS unemployment report, which occurs on the first Friday of each month. The TRU rate and supporting data are available on the LISEP website at lisep.org/tru.

About LISEP

The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) was created in 2019 by Gene Ludwig and his wife, Dr. Carol Ludwig. The mission of LISEP is to improve the economic well-being of middle- and lower-income Americans through research and education. LISEP’s original economic research includes new indicators for unemployment, earnings, and cost of living. These metrics aim to provide policymakers and the public with a more transparent view of the economic situation of all Americans, particularly low- and middle-income households, compared with misleading headline statistics. On X: @LISEP_org.

About Gene Ludwig

In addition to his role as LISEP chair, Gene Ludwig is founder of the Promontory family of companies and Canapi LLC, a financial technology venture fund. He is the founder and CEO of Ludwig Advisors, which counsels financial firms on critical matters. Ludwig is the former vice chairman and senior control officer of Bankers Trust New York Corp. and served as the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency from 1993 to 1998. He is also author of the book The Vanishing American Dream, which investigates the economic challenges facing low- and middle-income Americans. On Twitter: @geneludwig.

Please Note:

The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity continuously revises and updates its data. As a result, data presented in this release may no longer reflect the latest estimates. Find the most current data at lisep.org.