Women’s Workforce Hit Hard By the Pandemic
Job losses in the healthcare and hospitality industry have hit the women's workforce the hardest in Northeast Minnesota since the pandemic began.
MINNESOTA – The pandemic continues to have long-lasting impacts on employment in the Northland, including hitting the women’s workforce hard.
Job losses in the healthcare and hospitality industry have hit the women’s workforce the hardest in Northeast Minnesota since the pandemic began.
According to local workforce experts, several factors impeded the ability of women to stay and hold jobs. These included difficult access to childcare along with the impacts of distance learning.
“Then you add the pandemic on top of it, and schools shutting down and just, the burden fell on women and moms to pick up the pieces, make up the gap,” said Elena Foshay, the director of Workforce Development for the City of Duluth.
During a roundtable discussion hosted by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, experts say that the pandemic also stopped many women from growing professionally in their work situations.
“Advancement in the workplace is kind of put on hold so when we think about whether you’re accelerating in your career or not, there aren’t a lot of training opportunities to kind of put those things on hold, really affecting specifically black women and BIPOC women who are in the workforce,” said Alex West Steinman of The Coven.
However, there are some upsides to these trends as women are able to look into entrepreneurship.
“It kind of has a negative connotation that women are losing their jobs in the workforce so they’re turning to entrepreneurship, but it is kind of exciting too,” said Jaylana Peters, a loan officer. “I’ve talked to a lot of women who say, god, I’ve had a passion for this for so long and I”m just now having the opportunity to explore this option.”
Female unemployment reached over 16% in 2020 while male unemployment was at about 13.5%. Women also made up 51.5% of unemployment claims in the state.
