The Wall Street Journal says that women are flooding the workplace, largely because of the availability of remote work:
But it’s not time for a victory lap just yet. The same work-from-home opportunities that have enabled many moms in particular to enter or rejoin the workforce are also shackling them with fresh responsibilities. Many say they are effectively working two full-time jobs: managing their households and their careers.
But the Journal leaves something out: this surge of working women started long before the pandemic increased opportunities for remote work. The labor force participation rate for prime age women, for example, started turning up in 2016, not 2021. Likewise, as the Journal's own chart shows, the participation rate of women with small children has been rising since 2004. The same is true for their actual employment rate, and there's no special spike in 2022 or 2023:
The numbers just don't confirm the Journal's narrative that remote work has had an effect on women in general or on women with children. So why are they insisting on it?
Remote jobs aren't very easy to get, there tends to be a lot of competition for them. Moms with young kids are more motivated to apply for them in order to save on childcare costs and commuting time and be with their kids more, so they are overrepresented in them. Long term, I expect remote jobs will settle at a consistently lower pay rate than in-person jobs with similar required qualifications.
Remote jobs should have a lower pay rate. It’s a huge pain in the ass to have to commute to work, and employers should pay a premium to employees they force to do it. (If only I could convince my own employer to cut my salary a bit and in exchange let me work from home forever…)
Remote jobs should have a HIGHER pay rate, because the employer doesn't have to incur the often very substantial expense of providing a work place.
Bullshit. I didn’t ask my employer to provide me with a work place. It was entirely their decision that they “need” me to go to work in a cubicle where I don’t interact with anyone face to face anyway. I was perfectly OK for 3 years working from home all week long. It’s not my fault my employer decided to spend $100m+ on an office building that’s 30 min further away than our building pre pandemic. Why should my pay be reduced to pay for a workspace and a commute to that workspace that I obviously don’t need since I got above average reviews every year my employer was forced by the pandemic (and then subsequent decision to build a new marquee office building) to “let” me work from home? And if there’s no reason to reduce my pay in that situation… it suggests there’s no reason for an employee to have higher pay for working remotely either.
You should be paid more for working from home because YOU are paying for the work space.
You're paying for the work space but NOT paying for a commute. Unless you live in an expensive city or very close to your employer, the commute is probably more expensive than the work space. If you're avoiding childcare costs by working from home, you're definitely saving money.
Employers save money by having people work from home. It seems only fair that they should share that saving with the workers.
lawnorder, like a good bootlickin' libertarian hayekhead, siding with management.
How exactly is "they should pay more" siding with the management?
OTOH, we don't see a huge drop in employment from the pandemic (which you'd expect if women had to stop working to do full time child care instead because all that shit was closed).
In fact, we see the opposite: gains.
So... while it might not be an explosion, it certainly seems like gains are there.
As I read the graph, the employment rate for women with children under six rose rapidly from 1976 to about 1996 and has been steady but for minor fluctuations since then,
Bingo. In 1996, women got peeved and stopped trying to work so hard.
I was a stay-at-home mom though the mid 1980s-90s, and I was on every other mother's speed dial for emergency pick-ups and sick coverage.
And a big piece of this is men's increased participation in child-care, scheduling, and household chores. That increased because women were revolting by 1996.
There was a silent revolution then. I predict another in November.
Kevin says that the WSJ data doesnt show anything special happening post pandemic. But the chart provided by the WSJ does show a pretty massive change post pandemic.
Why mislead readers about this?
The available data provided by the BLS also appears to show solid employment and labor force gains by women with children under 18 which also outpace the gains seen by men with children and adults without children. These gains are most extreme for women with young children.
So the data doesnt really support Kevins narrative, but hes been stuck on this narrative for the last few years no matter what the data says.
Well, this being the Journal, it seems pretty straightforward that they're going to fit whatever data are available into the Eternal Truth About Silly Women "Working" At Men's Jobs.
You want a glue that binds pretty much ALL parts of the Republican coalition together, it's misogyny.
Some editor probably has a young woman in his family making some money from the affiliate-buyer programs linked to their social media feeds.