March 2020: COVID-19 strikes, massive job losses
The COVID-19 pandemic upended women’s economic gains, wiping out 35 years of progress in two short months.
Between February and April 2020, a total of 2.8 million women lost their job or were working less than half of their regular hours due to the necessary shut down of the economy.
Low-wage workers—overwhelmingly women, highly racialized—bore the worst of the recession. Fully half (52 per cent) of all low-wage workers earning $14 an hour or less were laid off or lost most of their hours between February and April. This included 58 per cent of low-wage women and 45 per cent of men in this earnings bracket.
Fall 2020 and 2021: A slow circuitous rebound
The employment situation started to improve in the fall of 2020—mostly for women aged 25 to 54 years. Their rate of employment reached a record high of 81.7 per cent in 2023, 1.7 percentage points above 2019 levels.
By the start of 2022, most women had recovered job losses, but some had a more difficult path.
Young women continue to struggle, concentrated in areas of the economy that were especially hard hit in 2020. Along with women (and men) over age 55 years, their employment rate has yet to recover; employment opportunities have not kept pace with substantial population growth.
After an initial flurry of retirements in 2020 and 2021, notably among workers in the care economy, the number of older workers is now on the rise, especially those over age 60—not surprising in the face of Canada’s skyrocketing living costs.
2022: Pandemic supports end, women are on their own
The employment recovery has been broad-based; women with disabilities, racialized workers, Indigenous Peoples and other marginalized workers all made important employment gains between 2020 and 2022.
The employment rate among women who immigrated to Canada in the last 10 years, for example, significantly improved between 2019 and 2023, narrowing the gap with Canadian-born women.
After a rocky start, Indigenous women likewise experienced a significant boost in their employment rate, reaching 75.1 per cent in 2022, 4.6 percentage points above 2019 levels. But there was a decline in 2023 as employment growth eased. This raises the question: are the post-pandemic gains at risk?
Women with lower levels of education remain hugely vulnerable. When the pandemic hit, their employment levels dropped by 13.3 per cent between 2019 and 2020. In 2023, the gap was even larger (-17.8 per cent). Their economic prospects have continued to deteriorate post-pandemic.
2023: An uneven recovery
Workers in pandemic-vulnerable sectors have truly been on a bumpy ride. By the end of 2022, total employment (both men and women) in vulnerable sectors was still 125,000 jobs short of pre-pandemic levels despite sizable gains in retail, with women accounting for 80 per cent of the gap.
2023 was a better year for this group of workers, notably for male workers. Women’s employment, however, continued to lag in accommodation and food services, other services such as hair salons and laundries, and arts, entertainment, and recreation.
Likewise, the number of self-employed female workers, particularly those working on their own, were still below 2019 levels. With rising bankruptcies, it seems likely that the situation of small business owners will remain difficult for years to come.
The ongoing struggles of pandemic vulnerable sectors and the millions who work there remains an important threat to women’s economic security—and the security of marginalized women, who are over-represented in these industries.
Indeed, with the surge in immigration in 2021 and the retirement of older Canadian-born workers, immigrants and non-permanent residents—as well as young people—now represent a larger share of workers in these precarious sectors than in 2019, even as the overall size of these industries has declined.
2024: Multiple tracks for women
Canada’s recovery is best viewed as proceeding along multiple tracks—a description that highlights the vastly different experiences of low-wage frontline service workers, care economy workers, and the workers in industries such as professional and technical services who were largely insulated from the economic turmoil.
Four white-collar industries—professional services, information industries, public administration and finance and insurance—posted high growth rates following the emergency phase of the pandemic, opening job opportunities for many women in the process. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of women working in these sectors increased by 22 per cent, narrowing the employment gap with male workers.
The share of women working in professional services, such as computer systems design, legal services and accounting, increased by 1.9 percentage points between 2019 and 2023. Women now represent 44.1 per cent of the total labour force in this industry.
The relative increase of women working in public administration was even larger, 2.3 percentage points, pushing women’s share of employment above the 50 per cent mark.
There was also a boost in women’s representation in construction and manufacturing, part of an overall push to expand apprenticeship opportunities. But the impact of the increase didn’t significantly shift the gender composition of these male-dominated industries. Only 13.2 per cent of workers in construction are women, and 29.1 per cent of women work in manufacturing.
The care economy workforce has expanded as well. Hospitals and educational services reported the second and third largest increases in women’s employment between 2019 and 2023—a total of 202,000 jobs. The proportion of women working in health care, social assistance and educational services is now higher than it was before the pandemic. One in every three female workers (32.9 per cent) works in the care economy.
Men, too, have increased their share of care economy employment—from 22.7 per cent to 24.2 per cent. Given the glacial pace of change in male-dominated industries, the growing presence of men in female-dominated work is an optimistic sign of a more equitable, less gender-segregated workforce.
But … and there’s always a but
Has the boost of employment in higher-paid sectors resulted in greater economic security for women? In a word: no.
Lower employment rates, fewer working hours per week, substantial labour market segregation and persistent glass ceilings mean that women are still paid considerably less than men.
Rising living costs were especially devastating for low-wage workers in industries still struggling to recover. There has been a drop in the proportion of women workers earning less than two-thirds of the median hourly wage, from 23.3 per cent in 2019 to 20.9 per cent in 2023.
But the remaining women are working for less. Restaurant workers and grocery store clerks, for instance, made less in 2023 than in 2019. Recent immigrants have been especially hard hit.
Workers in the care economy also experienced real pay cuts, many subject to wage restraint through the pandemic and beyond. The pay gap between men and women in these services tends to be narrower than in the private sector, but wages have fallen behind.
The wage growth posted between 2019 and 2023 has been almost exclusively driven by gains among white-collar workers. Up and down the earnings ladder, women experience pay gaps, reflecting entrenched systemic bias, the unequal burden of care and outright discrimination.
If there is one message to take forward, it is that change on gender equality is possible—but vigilance and concerted action are needed to get us there. And a laser focus on intersectionality to capture the diversity of people’s lived experience and the scale of the challenge in front of us.
