Catherine Rampell, syndicated opinion columnist at The Washington Post, political/economic commentator at CNN and special correspondent at PBS NewsHour, and C. Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, talk about where things stand in the pandemic economic recovery.
[music]
Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On this week that began with Labor Day, we have a scrambled unemployment and unemployment picture that, on first blush, might look like it makes no sense but actually makes total sense in the context of people's real lives.
One headline you may have heard this week is that there are now more job openings in the United States than there are job seekers. Sounds nonsensical, right? But it actually makes total sense when you look closely enough.
Also, overall unemployment is down compared to the pandemic lockdown era of not that long ago, but unemployment among Black Americans, especially Black women is up. Unemployment among mothers as a group also up. That is fewer moms had jobs outside the home in August than have them in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
By contrast, employment for women and men without kids at home and yes for men with kids, their employment numbers went up last month. For mothers with kids at home not up. At the same time, millions of Americans lost extended federal unemployment benefits that expired, weirdly or by design, on Labor Day.
What does it all mean? With us now, our Washington Post economics and political columnist, Catherine Rampell. She's also a CNN commentator and PBS NewsHour special correspondent and has a Washington Post column called The August jobs report shows delta is claiming livelihoods. Here's how the government must respond.
We have Dr. C Nicole Mason, president, and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the prominent Washington think tank. Catherine, welcome back. Dr. Mason, welcome to WNYC.
Catherine Rampell: Great to be here.
Dr. C Nicole Mason: Yes, that's great. Thanks for having me.
Brian Lehrer: Catherine, I saw you tweeted that statistic about mothers yesterday. Want to take us into it a little bit? What's the narrative that goes with those numbers?
Catherine Rampell: This past year, year and a half really has been really hard on working moms because-- Well, first of all, women are more likely to have been employed in some of the sectors that are most sensitive to the pandemic. People working at nail salons, other kinds of service sectors that require in-person interactions. Those have been hit really badly, and then on top-- That's just women in general. Then on top of that, you also have the fact that, of course, childcare arrangements have been basically exploded over the past year and a half because schools have been closed, childcare facilities have been shut down, or have had restricted capacity.
As a result, a lot of working parents, but predominantly women because women are more likely to be their family's primary caregiver, have struggled to maintain or obtain employment given the needs of caring for their children. This has really been a challenge. It looked like women's employment and mothers' employment had been recovering somewhat over the past year and a half as the pandemic seem to be abating. Then, of course, Delta hit. I wouldn't say we're quite back at square one, but a lot of that progress has been erased.
Brian Lehrer: Dr. Mason, someone told me that you coined the term for the pandemic economy, 'the she-cession'. Is that your term?
Dr. C Nicole Mason: Yes, that is. It was just to really better understand the impact of income and employment losses on women during the pandemic, and also really thinking about the different kinds of women who are going to be disproportionately impacted by job losses as well.
Brian Lehrer: What would you like to add to the analysis that Catherine began there?
Dr. C Nicole Mason: Catherine raised many good points and also wanting to bring the conversation in around Black women and women of color who have been disproportionately impacted by job losses because of their concentration on the hardest-hit sectors. When we do think about recovery and women reentering the workforce, having reliable childcare schools being reopened, afterschool programs being fully operational, is going to be really important to mothers and particularly women of color, many of whom are single moms or the primary wage earner in their families, and they're really trying to figure out how to do it, how to reenter the workforce, and ramping up in terms of finding a job.
When we hear about the discrepancy between all the jobs that are out there versus what's happening with women, we have to understand that it's going to take a little bit of time, especially as schools are just now beginning to reopen for women to fully reenter the workforce. [crosstalk]
Brian Lehrer: Take us further into that on that last point or two? How do you begin to explain the fact that there are more job openings than job seekers right now? Why aren't those openings finding those unemployed people and vice versa, and how does that intersect with the picture you were just painting?
Dr. C Nicole Mason: I think it's really important for us to unpack this a little bit. What sectors are these jobs? Many of the jobs that we lost during the pandemic were lower-wage jobs. Jobs without benefits, jobs with little flexibility, jobs without healthcare. We know, during the pandemic, those things, earning, health insurance, job flexibility, job security really was a deciding factor for many women who left the workforce.
There has to be greater alignment between the kinds of jobs that are available and what women and workers need in this moment. I think once we close that gap because I believe there is a gap. Also, we have to really understand at the end of the day until we get this pandemic under control and schools fully open, and parents and women feel comfortable, even filling out an application, going into work, that we still will continue to see this gap.
Brian Lehrer: Catherine, further to that point, I read that sector by sector we have things like construction and education with more applicants than jobs, but we have things like food service and childcare and retail with more openings than applicants. How much do you think that's because more people are avoiding jobs that seem unsafe or too complicated and aggravating in the pandemic?
Catherine Rampell: I think there are lots and lots of factors that are making some jobs less attractive than they were in the past, and, in many cases, may not have been all that attractive in the past. Working at a fast-food establishment, for example, I think has always been a very difficult and low-wage job, so probably not most workers first choice if indeed they have choices.
During the pandemic, those kinds of experiences have just gotten more dangerous because they're high risk. You're interacting with the public, in many cases, face to face, because during long stretches of the pandemic, anyway, the people who were working in these low-wage sectors were also having to enforce-- They got enlisted in the culture wars over mask mandates, for example. They'd end up fighting with customers about whether they would have to wear masks or engage in other kinds of safety precautions, things that made the job more difficult.
Brian Lehrer: Now they have to check vaccine cards in lots of places and police that.
Catherine Rampell: Yes. Right. There are lots of ways in which those jobs, which have always been difficult jobs, always been somewhat inflexible jobs to get to Nicole's point. They have become less attractive, more stressful. These places are very short-staffed for all of those reasons, which compounds the stressfulness of the jobs.
If you're scrambling to try to fill even more orders than you would normally. You're making more money, presumably, most of these low-wage jobs-- or I don't know about most, but the average wage for these jobs has increased but perhaps not enough to offset the additional discomfort, stress, risk et cetera that comes with them. It's just not enough to attract people to that kind of work.
I think you do-- there have been anecdotal stories about a lot of workers making major career transitions. They're changing occupations, they're changing industries. We don't really have great data on that yet, but certainly, there are plenty of anecdotes about that in the food services sector, in the retail sector as well.
I think that these positions have just become less attractive, and when weighed against all of the other kinds of concerns that we've been talking about, access to childcare, access to public transit in many places has also got worse. All of those things mean that when you add up the pros and cons, those jobs just may not be the ones that people want to take, and/or people may have dropped out of the labor force entirely for a while, while they seek shelter from the pandemic.
Brian Lehrer: I want to come back to the wages question in a second, and also to the relationship between what seem like wacky unemployment numbers and the uncertainties about the reopening of school taking place around the country right now. First, I want to invite our listeners in. Listeners, help us report any aspect of this story. Did you get a job this summer after not having one for a while? (646) 435-7280. Are you resistant to going back to work in a field you used to work in because of COVID risks and other uncertainties related to the pandemic? (646) 435-7280.
What about if you have kids at home and school is reopening, but you don't know if you're going to need to be there for quarantines or whatever. Is that affecting your work outside the home decisions? (646) 435-7280. Are you an employer finding applicants, or a shortage of applicants for the kinds of work you're offering? Are you raising wages as a result? Are you seeing any more applicants now that the extended unemployment benefits have expired at the federal level or recipients of those benefits?
What now for you? What are you grappling with and deciding upon as you lose some of that weekly income or anyone else with a relevant story or question? (646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280, or tweet your question or comment @BrianLehrer for Washington Post columnist, Catherine Rampell, and C. Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
Dr. Mason, what about wages in this context? By the laws of supply and demand, at least from the textbook version and economics class, this reluctance of people to work in these difficult during the pandemic fields should push wages up. These are also classically low-wage sectors like childcare and hospitality. Is it happening in real life and to what degree?
Dr. C Nicole Mason: This is a really good question. When we think about wages and lower-wage jobs, what we learned during the pandemic is that these jobs are lower-wage jobs, but they may be lower-wage jobs, but they actually are essential jobs that we just haven't been paying the cost for what they are worth and the contribution of these jobs to our society, particularly caregiving and caretaking.
We're in this moment where there's not a lot of movement by employers in terms of improving wages. It's very incremental raising wages or including benefits, so it's not just about the wages, it's also about the benefits, the paid sick leave, the health insurance, job flexibility. There's constant refrain from employers because nobody wants to work. There's very little examination about the working conditions and the wages that workers are being paid.
We've heard a lot about this idea of the great resignation, but what I think we're in, I think, in this moment, we're in a moment of the great renegotiation. Workers are thinking about what kind of job they need. What's it really going to take, in terms of wages, to take care of their families? What do they need?
I think the pandemic really taught us all something, and so, what are we going to do with those lessons? I do think this is an opportunity to raise wages, make low wage jobs quality jobs and really listen to what workers are saying they need once and for all.
We did a national survey of women at the beginning of the year, and one of the top five issues, was number two for black women behind healthcare, was raising the minimum wage. That's really important, but employers have to engage these ideas and really think more broadly about what it's going to really take to attract good employees or employees over the long term. We've seen signing bonuses, we've seen some other incentives, but I think workers are asking for a bigger transformation, and we're in this moment.
Brian Lehrer: Catherine, you agree, do you think there's a great renegotiation taking place in the American economy, or just maybe the whisps of the beginning of a potential one that, somehow, workers have to try to leverage?
Catherine Rampell: I generally agree with what Dr. Mason just laid out there. Workers are renegotiating the conditions of their employment, not just on compensation, by the way, but on hours and other kinds of constraints. There have been a number of surveys suggesting that people are rethinking what their priorities are in some respect, do they want to work as many hours? Are they willing to work in person if their job is possible to be done virtually?
That's mostly a different income class of workers. People who have those kinds of choices tend to be more educated and higher income, not exclusively, but to a large extent. There are lots of kinds of renegotiations going on over various fronts. To some extent, employers do seem to be changing their attitude about these things, deciding, "Well, how much can I tolerate having people work remotely versus in person? How much can I tolerate giving more consistent work hours, even if that means that I'm not as responsive to the fluctuations of customer demand?"
Again, if you look at the overall numbers, wages are rising. Now they may not be rising enough to provide a living wage in many of these fields or to induce people necessarily to come back to their old jobs. I am sympathetic to the fact that for many of these employers, there are constraints on how much more they can raise wages.
I think it's easy to say, well, if employers want workers, they should just pay them more, and to some extent, that's true, but for a lot of companies, restaurants were a good example. They had a really painful year and a half over this past year, forced closures, very low demand for their services, and they may still be struggling. They may not be able to pay workers as much as those workers want or even deserve without raising prices by a ton, which would drive away customers.
I think there are employers who are trying to respond to these demands out of necessity or out of the goodness of their heart, probably more out of financial necessity, but it's a difficult dance if they don't have a lot of cash on hand. If their margins are already very thin and they need to pass along more of the price increases to their customers and that's going to lose them business.
I think it's not as easy as just saying, well, they should all just raise wages because there are limits on that. I think many employers can afford to raise wages and a lot of the big employers, which, publicly-traded ones, for example, a lot of the big-box retailers. They have publicized their wage increases and they probably have more of a cushion that allows them to do that, but for smaller businesses, it may be challenging. I think that's why you hear a lot of complaints from these employers. "Why won't people just come back? I've raised the pay by a dollar or whatever." Well, maybe a dollar is all you can afford, but not enough to entice people back.
Brian Lehrer: Lydia in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lydia, thank you for calling in.
Lydia: Hi, thank you so much for taking my call.
Brian Lehrer: Tell us your story.
Lydia: I am an early childhood educator and I left teaching for the 2020-2021 school year because I have a daughter in public school in Brooklyn, and it just felt overwhelming to think about how to do remote learning for her. I taught preschool online when we first all shut down back in March of 2020 while she was also home and it felt impossible.
I've been out of the workforce for over a year now and was just getting ready to dip my toe back into the water and then we've had this Delta surge, and I'm just, it's been really hard to think about childcare and the unknown of the pandemic, and my husband works a job that requires him to be in-person. So there's not flexibility for him to stay home for quarantine, and so figuring out what job actually fits this new life for me as a woman and a mom in this reality.
Brian Lehrer: Lydia, thank you so much. I see a lot of heads nodding out there, even though this is not a visual medium. I can see them, their heads are nodding out there. "Yes, me too. Yes, me too." Yes, that sounds like me. Let's take another call. Here's Ras, a chef I see in the East Village, you're on WNYC, hi there?
Ras: Hi, Brian, how are you? [clears throat]
Brian Lehrer: Good. Tell us your story.
Ras: I was telling your screener that I was furloughed in March 2020 along with just about every other union and club worker in New York City. We're in the local six hotel club union which is about 10,000 members strong. What's happening now is that the union-- oh, I'm sorry, the hotel and the clubs are not taking us, union workers, back as they open slowly.
I think it's like a bargaining tactic for them now, where they can hire less employees back because they use the excuse that they can't open up full-time because they don't have enough customers. Because unions usually have the upper hand when bargaining in this situation, but now we're also out of work and we're having a really tough time getting back, and we feel as though management is dragging their feet so they can take us back slowly, and some of us not all.
Brian Lehrer: Ras, thank you very much. Let me take one more caller in this set and then we'll talk about everybody. TK in Rockland County, you're on WNYC. Hi, TK.
TK: Hey, good morning sir. I'm going to tell you, FedEx is not a little company but they aren't paying and they're cracking the whip on the people that have been there, have been loyal to them. You've got to work to replace the people that aren't coming in, and the people that aren't coming in got sense because we're in there getting sick, you don't know who's sick, who's not sick and you're in an enclosed space, you're in a truck with somebody. Where's the love? Because there's no extra money but it's more work, more stress, and less safety. Who's winning? It isn't us.
Brian Lehrer: TK, I hear you. Keep calling us. We're going to take a break right here, come back, and discuss the three callers we just heard. We'll take some more, and there's also some breaking news that ties into this conversation we're having about the scrambled economic and jobs picture right now, which is that President Biden we just learned, this is just breaking now, is going to officially announce today a COVID vaccine requirement for all federal workers and contractors. We're going to talk about what that might mean in the pandemic health respect but also with our current guests in the economic sense, stay with us.
[music]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Washington Post economics and political columnist, Catherine Rampell, and Dr. C Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research as we talk about who's employed and who's unemployed in the Delta variant economy. We're taking your calls at (646) 435-7280.
Dr. Mason, I wonder if you could comment on the first caller in the set of calls we just took, the woman, Lydia, who works in early child care. Also has her own kid and she's reluctant to try to get back into the outside workforce right now with the Delta variant looming and not knowing what's going to happen with school and quarantines and all of that. I said I could see heads nodding out there. Do you think there are a lot of people like that?
Dr. C Nicole Mason: I do, and when you said that I said, "Many women are having the same experience as Lydia." They were hoping to re-enter the workforce because there is economic strain, there's been a tremendous amount of economic strain on women over the last year and a half with job losses and having to exit the market because of caretaking responsibilities.
This year, myself included, I was really looking forward to schools re-opening and my kids going back to school and we're getting back to some kind of normal. That was all up-ended with the Delta variant and the uncertainty around school openings and closures and as well as daycare. I think Lydia's experience, what we have seen in the mixed jobs report this past month is really indicative of what many women and many families are facing across the country.
Brian Lehrer: Catherine, your column is called The August jobs report shows delta is claiming livelihoods. Here's how the government must respond. Now we have a Biden response. Maybe it's not precisely to the economy, though maybe it is with what's being reported by multiple news organizations right now which is that later today he's going to announce a COVID vaccine requirement for all federal workers and contractors. What's your first reaction?
Catherine Rampell: I think this is something he should have done long ago. I'm glad that he's doing it now or reportedly going to do this. I mean, as listeners may recall, Biden had announced a version, a sort of somewhat weaker version of this mandate. When was that? Maybe a month ago. It's hard to keep track of time these days, but there was an out. You could either get a vaccination or submit to regular testing and masking requirements and things like that.
Look, the persistence of this pandemic is bad for lots of reasons. It's claiming lives, it's claiming livelihoods, that is it's killing people and it's taking away people's ability to work and to pay their bills and put food on the table. The only way we are going to get it under control is through vaccination and other kinds of measures to mitigate spread.
I think the more that government can use the levers available to get people vaccinated, the better. I am wondering actually how the White House is thinking about some of the other powers it has available to require vaccinations. For example, they could require vaccination proof in order to fly in airplanes, any other kind of limited sectors where the federal government has some oversight and regulatory power, they could think about changing the incentives there. I would love it if they did.
There are some state and municipal politicians who are taking action to either require or otherwise incentivize vaccination for other kinds of public workers or other industries here in New York. Of course, we have a vaccination mandate for indoor dining which, in my experience, doesn't seem to be universally enforced for some of the reasons I've been talking about earlier about having lower-wage workers police these kinds of vaccine proof.
I do think the more involvement we can get from our leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, industry leaders, et cetera, to encourage or force for-- At this point, I think persuasion has not been sufficient. I think you need to have some greater mandates at the employer and/or government level to get people vaccinated. I think that's the only way out of this. It's the only way out of more unnecessary deaths and the only way to get our economy back on its footing. The key to more jobs is more jabs.
Brian Lehrer: The key to more jobs is more jabs says Catherine Rampell from The Washington Post. Dr. Mason, what do you think about vaccine mandates in general and the implications for economic inequality? I guess we should say that some of the people declining to get vaccines so far may run along the same lines demographically as the people in the lower-wage more vulnerable jobs or unemployment categories.
Dr. C Nicole Mason: I think vaccine mandates are really smart and what we need to move forward and overcome the pandemic. I just also want to circle back around to the other two callers who, in my opinion, expressed a lot of angst and anxiety around both working in unsafe conditions because of the pandemic, having an additional layer of work because of the scarcity of employers, or colleagues.
When I think about mandates and the significance of people getting vaccinated in this moment, it really is for the economy, it's also for workers. When we think about vaccine hesitancy, there's a lot of reasons why people are hesitant to get vaccinated, to be held to be religious. It could be historical as well, but I do think government intervention, communities talking to one another, we've learned that people may not be listening to Biden or celebrities talk about getting vaccinated, but they are listening to their neighbors and their family members.
I think it's a full-throttle effort. I do think it would make the difference in terms of women returning to the workforce, workers feeling comfortable, and really getting the economy back on track.
Brian Lehrer: Kenric in Bed-Stuy, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kenric.
Kenric: Hey, it's Kenric. First-time caller, longtime listener. I'm a recruiter at an accounting firm, Citrin Cooperman, and one of the issues that we've been having is with hiring folks, the supply-demand is low. When we do make offers, folks accept and then they come back and they rescind.
We've been having a lot of those issues because folks have two to four offers. We're not sure why that is. We're not requiring vaccination. We've allowed remote work. We're not forcing people to come into the office. We're just getting people rescinding offers because there's so much demand out there.
Brian Lehrer: There's demand for the employees who have the skills that your company is looking for. Interesting plans on the labor market. Janine in Springfield, Virginia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Janine.
Janine: Hey, Brian, how are you? This conversation is such a rich deep one because when we stop seeing people as commodities in this country, that's when it's going to change. At least Rampell was talking about restaurants. I hope I got your name right.
Brian Lehrer: You do.
Janine: And how the restaurant owners, the small business ones don't have money to pay people more. I worked in the restaurant industry in New York for over 10 years and it's one of the most corrupt, the small-- This isn't everyone, but in my experience, those restaurant owners were so corrupt and would scam the workers out of so much money to line their pockets. It's just ridiculous.
When you look at what people are doing with childcare, people who work as EMTs, people who work as teachers, everyone who's working in service in this country, historically, ever since has been hurt by the economy. Because we live in a system where we don't want to pay people who work in service because we're based on slavery.
America is used to people who are in service not being compensated for the vital work that they do. Until we as a people in this country make a decision to have a basic income, and to have health care, and having affordable housing as a human right, the people who work in service are going to deal with these issues. Particularly with how the world is changing due to global warming.
We're going to have more pandemics, and those who have "resources" are always going to need people who don't have resources to care for them. When I worked for wealthy people as a chef in New York, they were the cheapest people on the planet, they didn't want to pay. Once people who have money don't want to pay $2 for everything and get things for free, that's when the economy will change, and I would love to hear your comment, talk about.
Brian Lehrer: Absolutely, thank you so much. We're almost out of time in the segment. Janine is more or less going to get the last word here, but Catherine Rampell, she addressed that at you, playing off something you said earlier, so you want to give that a quick response?
Catherine Rampell: Look, I have no doubt that there are a lot of labor abuses among other abuses within the food services sector. There are honest people in that sector, and it is a really tough business within margins, as evidenced by the fact that there's tons of turnover and lots of restaurants fail, even in non-pandemic time. I think it's a mixed picture, but yes, we do need to pay workers more. The challenges will the customers be willing to tolerate the higher prices that that would require? I think that thesis is being tested right now and we'll see how it turns out.
Brian Lehrer: Catherine, I know you have another appointment, so if you have to jump off, go ahead and thank you.
Catherine Rampell: Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: I'll give Dr. Mason the last word too since you run an Institute for Women's Policy Research, is there a policy item or are there one or two policy items at the top of your priority list that you would like President Biden to listen to?
Dr. C Nicole Mason: I just want to end with saying that what worked before the pandemic is not going to work today. We need to think about an economy that is fair and equitable, not only for employers but for workers as well. That is going to mean reimagining the relationship between employers and workers paying higher wages, not just because you're part of a union, but because people need sustainable wages to take care of their families. They need benefits, they need health care.
When I think about policy solutions, it really is, at the federal level, passing things like paid family medical leave, expanding unemployment insurance, affordable health care. There's so much work to be done, raising the federal minimum wage. This would all go a long way to building a more equitable economy, one that works for not just those at the top, but everyone. I think that's the direction we should be headed in.
Brian Lehrer: Dr. C. Nicole Mason, President, and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Thank you so much.
Dr. C Nicole Mason: Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Thanks again to Washington Post Economics and Political Columnist, Catherine Rampell, who was our other guest in this segment. She's also a CNN commentator and PBS NewsHour special correspondent. Brian Lehrer on WNYC, much more to come.
Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.