Historical look at employment trends by sex, race and ethnicity. A particular focus on how COVID-19 has or has not changed these broader patterns.

1. Oregon Employment
The Parent Gap and
Racial and Ethnic Disparities
June 2021 Oregon Office of Economic Analysis
Mark McMullen
Josh Lehner

2. The Parent Gap

3. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
3
Moms and dads defined as those having own child(ren)
younger than 18 years old living with them in their own
household.
Historically men work at higher rates,
but mostly due to the parent gap

4. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Risk: COVID put many working parents in a bind
due to lack of in-person schooling and childcare
• Only 1 in 3 workers can
theoretically work from
home due to the nature of
their jobs
• Parents in a Bind
concentrated among
middle-income households
• Middle-income households
more likely to have working
parents and jobs that
cannot be done remotely
• Lower income households
more likely to have a non-
working adult present
• Higher income households
more likely able to work
remotely

5. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Issue: Typically it takes years to recover
from major economic disruptions
• Oregonian moms
• 72% working
• 22% staying home to care for family
• 6% not working for other reason
• Working moms account for about 1
in 5 Oregonians in the labor force
• Only by the end of the last
economic expansion did the share
of mothers in the workforce really
rebound following the drops during
the Great Recession
• A number of overlapping issues
contribute including job availability,
job flexibility, wages paid, childcare
availability and cost

6. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Latest Data: No gender differences at the
topline
• Women lost their jobs more then
men at the start of the pandemic
• Since then, the overall gender gap
has closed. In May 2021 women had
recovered slightly more jobs than
men.
• National media headlines last
summer, during the winter, and again
last month included variations on the
“all the job gains were among men”
which, while technically true for that
given month, are not representative
of the broader trends
• The unemployment rate for
Oregonian women and men has
converged in the past year as well

7. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Latest Data: Clear parent gap
• While there are no large differences in
men and women, there are large
differences between moms and dads
• However it’s not that moms have
been disproportionately impacted
relative to the broader economy, it’s
that dads have been one of the least
impacted demographic groups
• Job losses among working moms
broadly match economywide trends,
they have not been impacted
disproportionately
• Even so, the parent gap is likely in part
due to the gender wage gap and fact
mothers bear the brunt of household,
family, and childrearing duties.

8. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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The outlier isn’t moms; it’s dads
All Prime-Age
Americans

9. Racial and Ethnic Disparities

10. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Historical disparities are embedded
within periods of full employment
• 2019 was the strongest economy
Oregon has experienced in decades
and while disparities were lessening,
they remained large
• 2019 white, not Hispanic Oregonian
unemployment 4%
• 2019 Black Oregonian unemployment
12%
Data: 2019 American Community Survey
Source: IPUMS-USA, Oregon Office of Economic Analysis

11. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Poverty gap was narrowing as well

12. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Employment trends by sex and race and
ethnicity in Oregon

13. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Share of Prime Working-Age Oregonians with a Job by
Educational Attainment and Race and Ethnicity, 2019
• Employment rates
generally increase with
educational attainment
however substantial
variation remains

14. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Structural barriers
NILF: Not in the Labor Force
• As discussed at the forecast
release, incarceration is a major
barrier to employment for Black,
and American Indian and Alaska
Native Oregonians in particular
• Incarceration (technically, Not in
Labor Force, Group Quarters in the
Census data) accounts for 26% of
the Black-white employment gap,
and 57% of the American Indian-
white employment gap in Oregon
in 2019

15. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Note this is not actual employment in Oregon by race and ethnicity
(sample size too small to do that). It takes overall employment by industry
and maps to the industrial mix of employment by race and ethnicity
based on Census data.
COVID the virus has clear disparate racial and ethnic health
impacts, however job losses appear to be proportional

16. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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• Leisure and hospitality is the hardest hit
sector economically during the pandemic
• Restaurants account for an outsized share of
businesses owned by BIPOC Oregonians
• Not necessarily because there are so many of
them, rather because there are fewer
accounting, legal, manufacturing, etc firms that
are BIPOC Owned, leaving restaurants as a larger
share overall
• To date the number of OLCC liquor licenses
for on-premise sales is down ~6% since the
pandemic began
• Do not have the data/information on the racial
and ethnic breakdowns of the changes
• Overall, this is both a big, and much better-than-
feared number indicating that there has not
been a massive wave of closures, or that new
businesses have already filled most of the
closures
• For more on business closures:
• https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/02/so
-far-fewer-business-closures-than-expected/
Heightened business closure risks

17. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Wealth skewed more than income
• Federal Reserve’s Survey of
Consumer Finance best source on
wealth nationally, including by race
and ethnicity. It is only published
every 3 years.
• Our office has created estimates of
home equity (home value minus
mortgage debt)
• In the Portland region, housing
wealth is even more concentrated
among white, Non-Hispanic
residents than is overall income, and
much more so than the diversity of
the population would indicate
• The changes from 2016 to 2019
indicate that income and wealth in
the Portland region, while still very
concentrated, is becoming more
diverse

18. Oregon Office of
Economic Analysis
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Contact
mark.mcmullen@oregon.gov
(503) 378-3455
joshua.lehner@oregon.gov
(971) 209-5929
www.OregonEconomicAnalysis.com
@OR_EconAnalysis