Despite what Carly Fiorina says, the employment situation for women isn’t all that bleak.
According to an analysis of the November employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) women in the U.S. gained 158,000 jobs last month. Most of these jobs were in educational and health services (55,000 jobs) and retail (50,000 jobs).
“This is strong growth and it’s pretty consistent growth,” says Heidi Hartmann, president and founder of IWPR.
Men’s jobs increased by 113,000, meaning that the women’s share of job growth was 58%. “Most months [in the past year], women have a higher share of job growth than men,” Hartmann says.
Carly Fiorina had previously said that “92% of the jobs lost during Barack Obama’s first term belonged to women.” While she later admitted that this statistic wasn’t true, she did insist that “it is factually true that women have been hit very hard by progressive policies.”
It is true that women were “hit hard” during the recession. The women’s labor force participation rate in October was 56.5%—2.9% lower than the rate in December 2007, at the start of the recession. However, men were hit just as hard if not harder: men’s labor force participation rate was 68.7 last month October, 4.4% lower than in December 2007.
Moreover, 2.8 million jobs have been added to payrolls in the past year alone, and more than half (52%) were filled by women.
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