Hamilton women, younger workers and part-timers hit hardest by COVID job losses

Women, younger workers and part-timers in Hamilton bore the brunt of this year's job market collapse based on the findings of a new report by the city's Social Planning and Research Council (SPRC).

Job losses from February through July due to the COVID-19 pandemic were three times higher for women than men in the Hamilton area, according to the SPRC's analysis.

Women suffered a net loss of 37,700 jobs compared to 10,600 for men.

They talked about the 2009 recession as kind of a he'-cession because there was a much greater impact on men," said Sara Mayo, a social planner with the SPRC. But this one is kind of a she'-cession."

Men have not had the brunt of the employment impacts that women have experienced," she added.

The reason, Mayo said, is because women are more segregated in so-called front-facing" jobs that deal with the public - retail, service positions and child care. Those jobs were more affected when the economy shut down.

The proportion of part-time workers who lost their jobs was four times higher than full-time workers. About 27 per cent of part-time workers in the Hamilton area lost their jobs compared to about seven per cent of full-time workers.

Labour market data doesn't ask about visible minority status nor does it ask about income, but we know that part-time jobs had the greatest loss and we know that part-time jobs are most likely to be filled by racialized workers and low-income workers," said Mayo.

When broken down by age, the youngest category - workers ages 15 to 24 - suffered the highest proportion of job losses at 16 per cent. The next highest proportion were workers between the ages of 45 to 54, who lost 14 per cent of all jobs.

At the peak of the economic collapse in June, nearly 60,000 jobs were lost as the COVID pandemic rattled the local economy. About 11,000 jobs were regained in July.

The Hamilton area's unemployment rate reached 12.3 per cent in June, the highest it has been since at least 1996.

Mayo said any plan for an economic recovery should focus on groups that experience marginalization and inequity because they are most at risk of being left behind.

We should be focusing our efforts as much as possible on groups that face discrimination in the labour market and that face more precarious employment," Mayo said.

Steve Buist is a Hamilton-based investigative reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbuist@thespec.com