Written by Valerie Norton, Public Policy Fellow,
and Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security
National Women's Law Center
The headlines about July’s unemployment numbers, released today by the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, highlight that "
Job Losses Slow in July," and that this is "
The least bad jobs report in a long time". It is encouraging that the rate at which jobs are being lost has declined, thanks in part to the impact of the
Recovery Act, as the Economic Policy Institute reports.
http://nwlc.blogs.com/...
And, unemployment rates both for adult men and women are stable – slightly lower than in June. But unemployment and job losses remain at high levels – and things are getting worse for women who head families and the long-term unemployed.
Unemployment among women who head families, which we’ve been tracking for months, continued to surge. It increased from 11.7 percent in June to 12.6 percent in July, a jump of 7.7 percent in one month. The unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic women also ticked up. In addition, the number of long-term unemployed rose to nearly 5 million, a one-month increase of 13 percent; in July, 1 in 3 were jobless for 27 weeks or more. Such trends highlight the importance of the steps taken in the Recovery Act to extend unemployment benefits and incentivize states to expand coverage to more low-wage workers and women.
However, the extension provided by the Recovery Act is about to run out. According to an analysis from the National Employment Law Project, over 500,000 workers will exhaust their unemployment benefits by the end of September, increasing to 1.5 million by the end of the year. An extension of benefits is particularly important for women who head families, as they often have no other source of income to fall back on and, as shown by today’s data, are continuing to experience greater economic insecurity and job loss.
Today’s data highlight the need for Congressional action to provide additional weeks of unemployment benefits to help those have yet to see the signs of economic recovery in their own lives and who remain particularly vulnerable.
Cross-posted from NWLC's blog.