Pelosi marks Equal Pay Day with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, says new data is ‘heartbreaking’

Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., commented on new Division of Labor information Tuesday exhibiting the wage hole burden on ladies – particularly on ladies of coloration – and the way the coronavirus pandemic disproportionally left extra ladies and mothers jobless.

The information launch coincided with an Equal Pay Day occasion on the Capitol on March 15 – the date that ladies in the USA should work till to be paid the identical quantity males have been within the prior yr. 

“These statistics are staggering,” Pelosi stated on the occasion. “They don’t seem to be solely staggering, they’re heartbreaking.”

In 2020, ladies earned 83 cents for each greenback earned by males. The hole is especially stark for Hispanic ladies (57 cents) and Black ladies (64 cents) when evaluating their wages to White, non-Hispanic males.

In the course of the coronavirus pandemic, ladies misplaced 11.9 million jobs in comparison with 10.1 million jobs misplaced by males from February to April 2020. The Division of Labor additionally studies that 4.4 million ladies left the labor pressure between February and April 2020, in comparison with 3.9 million males – placing ladies’s labor pressure participation fee at a 35-year low in April 2020.

Moms, who have been coping with canceled faculty and spotty day care companies, misplaced an estimated 3.5 hours per week in work between February and April 2020, better than the two.5 hours per week decline for fathers’ work hours, in response to the Division of Labor report.

“It isn’t simply concerning the affect of a pandemic,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh stated on the Equal Pay Day information convention. “It is about how low pay and restricted alternatives left ladies susceptible and proceed to depart ladies susceptible, particularly ladies of coloration on this nation. These injustice[s] have been created over many many years. This is not one thing new.”

The report from the Division of Labor is named: “Bearing the Price: How Overrepresentation in Undervalued Jobs Deprived Ladies In the course of the Pandemic.” It paperwork how ladies misplaced extra jobs in the course of the pandemic in comparison with males and the way Black and Hispanic ladies skilled essentially the most vital employment issues.

Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh excursions Levitt Pavilion Steelstacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on June 2, 2021.
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name, Inc through Getty Photographs)

The explanations are twofold: Ladies – who’ve carried out the vast majority of unpaid household caregiving — have been hardest hit when kids have been dwelling from faculty and disabled and older relations misplaced entry to care companies. Second, ladies have been overrepresented in industries that skilled the pandemic’s worst job losses, reminiscent of in leisure, hospitality, schooling, well being care and youngster care.

Ladies’s focus in low-wage jobs with few advantages is named trade and occupational segregation.

The report finds that segregation by trade and occupation price Black ladies an estimated $39.3 billion, and Hispanic ladies an estimated $46.7 billion, in decrease wages in comparison with White males in 2019.

Information from the federal authorities additionally confirmed the wage hole in every of the states for all ladies after which in contrast for Hispanic ladies and Black ladies. The general wage gaps have been the very best in Wyoming (65 cents for every greenback males make), Utah (70 cents) Louisiana (72 cents), Oklahoma (73 cents) and Alabama (74 cents). 

The states with the bottom wage gaps in 2019 have been Vermont (91 cents), Maryland (89 cents), Hawaii, California (88 cents) and Nevada (87 cents.)

“The preexisting vulnerabilities of Black and Hispanic working ladies are as a consequence of long-standing labor market insurance policies and practices that systematically devalue and drawback ladies, significantly ladies of coloration,” the Division of Labor report stated. “As a result of legacy of slavery, racial and gender stereotypes that Black ladies ‘ought to’ work outdoors the house persist. 

“Discrimination in opposition to Black males has additionally resulted of their decrease earnings and underemployment, creating monetary necessity for Black ladies to work for pay to assist their households,” the report continued. “Because of these and different elements, Black ladies have had better labor pressure participation charges than White ladies way back to information has been collected.”

Vice President Kamala Harris visits the Ben Samuels Childrens Middle at Montclair State College in New Jersey on Oct. 8, 2021.
(Justin Lane/EPA/Bloomberg through Getty Photographs)

Information from the Division of Labor additionally confirmed the wage hole in every of the states for all ladies, after which in contrast for Hispanic ladies and Black ladies. For example, the info launched Tuesday present that in California, Hispanic ladies misplaced $14.5 billion in wages in 2019 and Black ladies misplaced $1.5 billion as a price of occupational and trade segregation.