Today Canada had their job report out and in March, about 1 million Canadians lost their jobs. This is incredibly disheartening. What was curious from the data, which didn’t make the headlines, is that women aged 15-54 lost jobs at twice the rate than men.

Now this is partly because women are over represented in the industries that have been most impacted by the crisis (retail, leisure, education). But only by 1.2, meaning that (all else equal) for every 10 men that lose their jobs, 12 women should be losing their jobs.

However, what happened in March is that for every 10 jobs lost by males, 20 women lost their jobs. This is very unfortunate and highlights the gender imbalances that exist in the job market which make women more vulnerable in these crises.

1) Women are usually more represented in junior roles and therefore are more likely to be let go. 2) Women tend to be the primary caregivers and might have had to or chose to quit their jobs disproportionately to take care of their kids as schools and childcares are closed.

3) women are more likely to work part-time, making them more tenuously attached to the labour force and 4) It could also be a reflection of systemic discrimination (harder to measure).

This crisis that we are experiencing is highlighting many of the issues we have yet to fix in our society, unfortunately. 100k women lost their jobs and it had nothing to do with their choice of occupation