Women are at the forefront of the crisis as numbers from @StatCan_eng labour force report reveal. Women make up just under half of all workers, but accounted for 70% of all job losses among core aged workers in March. My analysis is here http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/04/10/women-bearing-the-brunt-of-economic-losses-one-in-five-has-been-laid-off-or-had-hours-cut/ 1/8

Job losses of this scale has pushed up the unemployment rate among women by 3.4 percentage points over the space of a month to 8.7%, the largest one-month increase on record. 2/8

Another 1.2 million women have seen at least half of their hours cut. This includes the many women working contract to contract, in precarious low wage jobs, as personal care assistants or cleaners – a group that is not currently eligible for CERB. 3/8

Altogether, over 1.8 million women have lost their jobs or lost at least half of their usual hours of employment. That’s roughly one in five female workers. 4/8

This doesn’t include those who have left the labour market altogether and are now at home caring for children or others who are ill with no prospect of immediate return. We also saw a significant increase in the number of women “not in the labour market.” 5/8

This is a number – and the employment rate – bear watching. The employment gap between men and women among core aged workers is already widening – by 2.8 percentage points in a single month (from 91.7% to 88.9%). This is a key indicator of gender equality. 6/8

This historic downturn is shaping up to be a disaster for women’s economic security. And we know the people facing intersecting forms of discrimination will suffer the largest and most profound losses and have the greatest difficulty springing back after the crisis. 7/8

Which is why it is critical to understand and document the gendered dimensions of the economic crisis and make the changes necessary to the emergency income programs to extend support to the hundreds of thousands who soon won’t be able to meet their basic needs. 8/8