The new jobs report is out, and the experts are apparently shocked over the anemic hiring numbers. I'm not, and neither are most women. Christine Roman on CNN explains:
"So the labor force, the labor market damage for women, a generation of progress for women in the workforce essentially wiped out by a global pandemic, by a pandemic in this country," Roman said.
"There's a lot of work to do there. That's where you'll see the White House trying to tie into its human capital, its infrastructure push, human worker infrastructure to make that point that you can't just turn the switch back on and everybody goes back to the way it was. Women, in particular, and families need supports in the labor market to come back.
"So many schools are still closed. I think my middle schooler is going to set foot in a school five times by the end of the year because of the way it's hybrid. How difficult for somebody to go back to a job or start looking again when you have those kinds of challenges in the family. That's something really to think about. As we go forward here with opening, hopefully that will get easier in the fall," she concluded.
"And that's why as we've heard these Republicans make the arguments about the labor supply and talking about the fact that these unemployment benefits are disincentivizing people from returning to the labor force," CNN correspondent Jeremy Diamond said.
"We've heard the White House instead focus on the disruptions to schooling, to child care which only helps them bolster their case for this American Rescue Plan."
But as we know, Republicans are just not happy unless they're blaming people for being lazy. (Some Republican-led states are now planning to cut off the federal $300 unemployment supplement to "incentivize" them to go back to work.)
Look, we know women took the employment brunt of the pandemic hit. And since in most families, mothers make the child care arrangements, now they're expected to wave a magic wand and somehow make reliable daycare appear. That's Republican magical thinking, which is what their policies always consist of.
