The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal Federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy.
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Has COVID-19 affected mothers’ labor market
outcomes?
Demetrio Scopelliti
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has posed several challenges to parents continuing to work
while also taking care of children who are unable to attend school or daycare because of safety regulations. While
some parents are able to stay with their children by working from home, many work in industries and occupations
that require them to work away from home. Because of the duration of the pandemic, childcare concerns have
caused some parents in single-parent and multiparent households to consider leaving the labor force, limiting the
hours they work in their current jobs, or changing jobs to work in occupations that allow them to work from home.
In “Did Covid-19 disproportionately affect mothers’ labor market activity?” authors Daniel Aaronson, Luojia Hu, and
Aastha Rajan (Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, January 2021) argue that COVID-19 has
adversely affected parents’ labor force participation that has disproportionately affected working mothers.
Aaronson and colleagues acknowledge that other studies have shown that COVID-19 has not substantially
affected parents’ labor force participation. However, their assessment of labor market activity of parents (ages 25
to 54) through fall 2020 shows that labor force participation of mothers was 0.6 percentage point lower in the
spring and 0.3 percentage point lower in the fall than that of adults in the same age group without kids. This finding
means that approximately 120,000 mothers left the labor force in spring 2020 and approximately 60,000 left in fall
2020. In analyzing the demographics of those mothers who chose to leave the labor force beginning in March
2020, the authors found that the negative affect was disproportionately experienced by Black, single, and
noncollege-educated mothers, reflecting disparities in the broader labor market over the same period.
Aaronson, Hu, and Rajan note that, while they assert gender disparity in labor