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Working moms faring far worse in pandemic than working dads

It boils down to kids. With schools shut down, often one parent needs to stay at home and it is falling on moms more than dads.

SAN DIEGO — New statistics from the Dallas Federal Reserve show the economy has recovered more than half of the jobs lost in the pandemic, but men are doing much better than women.

Chief economist, at SANDAG, Ray Major says it looks like a lot of this boils down to kids. 

"With a lot of the schools shut down, especially for the younger kids, what we see is one parent needs to stay home," said Major.

The Dallas Federal Reserve shows that starting in August and September, just as children were going back to school, men were getting jobs back and doing better. But things were getting worse for women, especially if they have kids under 13, suggesting that moms are doing a lot of the childcare and monitoring zoom classes.

"There's still wage discrepancies. So if you have a two-income family and one needs to give up their job, it's usually the mom to take care of the kids because usually, her income is lower than the husbands," said Major.

What's worse, the statistics show almost every group has done better, except Black moms who have it 6 times worse in terms of job recovery.

"This is happening because you have a disproportionate amount of African American women working who are working in low wage jobs that require health care and childcare for their children. You can't do both in a pandemic like this because you can't work in low paying jobs and be at home," said Tony Young, President and CEO of Rise San Diego.

Young also says the pandemic has exacerbated these issues.

"The bottom line is we have to find ways to give more opportunity for women to be successful in the workplace so they can afford childcare," said Young.

Major says full recovery could take years and will, no doubt, hurt overall economic growth, but a vaccine will certainly help to get kids back in school and moms back to work.

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