For single mom's, recovery's just a word

Source: Wall Street Journal

15%: The unemployment rate in 2011 for mothers who are unmarried, divorced or live apart from their spouses. Mother’s Day is a time for us to stop and appreciate the women who care for us and our children, but we also may want to take time to remember the more than two million moms struggling in our recession-battered labor market. In 2011, there were 2.3 million women with children under 18 years old who wanted a job but couldn’t find one, according to a recent report from the Labor Department. That put the unemployment rate for mothers at 9% last year, compared to 8.4% for all women. But the weakness was primarily concentrated among single moms. In 2010 for the first time, married mothers were more likely to be employed than single mothers. That trend became more pronounced in 2011. Last year, 63.4% of mothers living alone had a job, compared to 64.6% of married mothers. That was largely because single moms are having a much harder time finding employment. Their unemployment rate was 15% in 2011, compared to 6% for their married counterparts living with a spouse. Similar to every other demographic group, married women struggled during the recession. In 2008 and 2009, more of them entered the labor force as their spouses lost their jobs, and their unemployment rates rose along with the rest of the population. But as the broader market recovered, married women fared somewhat better. In 2010 and 2011, their participation rates fell back toward longer-term levels, and their unemployment rate declined. Single moms have had a much harder time. Even though the number of married mothers is nearly double the population of those living alone, single women with children account for more than half — 1.2 million — of the total number of unemployed mothers. Meanwhile, single moms have seen their unemployment rate continue to rise in the recovery, jumping seven percentage points since 2007. And that increase has come even as more of them have dropped out of the labor force, a trend that tends to depress the unemployment rate. If more single moms come back into the labor force, it could send the rate even higher this year. Part of that reason for the disparity is demographic differences. Single mothers are more likely to be minorities or have lower levels of education than their married counterparts. Women with just a high school diploma had an 8.7% unemployment rate in 2011, compared to 4.3% for college graduates. Meanwhile, black women had an 11.9% jobless rate, while white women’s rate was 6.5%.

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