Almost half of workforce is women, but wage gap remains
Friday, February 06, 2009
Andy Butner hasn't been able to find a new job since August even though he has sent out 15 resumes and is listed at four temporary agencies.
"I contact each twice a week and they have nothing," said Butner, 58, of Fairborn.
He's grateful his wife, Debbie, has a good job managing the Children's Miracle Network program at Children's Medical Center of Dayton, where she has worked for 38 years.
She has watched the number of women in the workforce grow during that time.
That number grew from 30 percent in 1950 to almost 47 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of November, women held 49.1 percent of jobs, according to nonfarm payroll data collected by the bureau.
While women being poised to surpass the number of men in the workforce is a milestone, plenty of challenges remain, said Paulette Olson, professor of economics at Wright State University.
The wage gap remains, with women earning 80 cents for every dollar a man earns.
"Surviving on a female wage is going to pose a challenge for most families," she said, noting many women work part-time jobs with no health insurance.
Olson said that's the reason why there is a growing number of two-income households because it's tough to support a family on one salary these days.
When Patty Crawley's husband, Mike, an electrician, lost his job last spring, she was faced with having to get back into the workforce after being a stay-at-home mom for 14 years.
Her husband had been striking out finding new work and they had two sons, then 12 and 14, to feed.
"I was so scared to death to go back into the workforce after all these years," she said. "I cried."
Through the Department of Job and Family Services she discovered Clothes that Work, a nonprofit started in 1998 to provide interview and work-appropriate clothing for women transitioning from welfare to work. The agency now also serves men but 70 percent of the clientele are women.
Clothes that Work served 1,100 people in 2007 and 1,176 in 2008, said Lindsay Freels, development director for the agency based in the Montgomery County Job Center, 1133 S. Edwin C. Moses Blvd..
Crawley went to the Clothes that Work site at 541 Ledbetter Road in Xenia last May to get an outfit for an interview she had with Dick's Sporting Goods.
"They gave me the outfit to go and they also gave me the confidence," she recalled.
An hour after her interview, she received a call that she was hired. She hung up and called her husband, mother and sisters to tell them, "I got a job!"
Her husband had gone back to work one week before she started but was laid off again in November.
Just this week, he started back in a new position he found through a temporary agency.
Today, Crawley works full-time with healthcare benefits as a cashier at the Dick's in the Mall at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek. She's thrilled to be part of the work force and proudly notes that she even received a raise in November.
"I had to get out there," she said. "Yes, it is scary. It is so scary but when you look at your kids' faces, you have to do something."
