Is the 'she-cession' over? Statistics point to recovery, experts aren't so sure

When Alicia Dempster started her maternity leave in June 2019, she never dreamed that she would still be at home two and a half years later.

The Stouffville, Ont., woman fully intended to return to her job as an event planner for an area municipality after 15 months at home caring for her infant son and his toddler brother.

But COVID-19 derailed those plans. When her planned return-to-work date rolled around, the complete absence of public events meant the job she once had no longer existed. The alternative work her employer offered her — cutting grass and picking weeds with the parks department — seemed a poor match for her skills, so she opted to stay home "just a little longer."

Now, her sons are five and two and a half and the Omicron variant is on the rise.

Like many Canadian women, Dempster is not only concerned about how long she's been out of the workforce, but should she find a job, she knows she'll be juggling the demands of work and parenting, including COVID tests and mandatory isolation every time one of her children gets a cough or the sniffles.

While recent data suggests a jobs recovery for working age women, the statistics fail to capture the whole picture, one in which many women are still struggling to balance work and family life.

Early in the pandemic, much was written about the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on the finances and career prospects of Canadian women.

Female-dominated industries like accommodation and food services were the hardest-hit by restrictions and lockdowns, and many women also suffered from a lack of child care as daycares and schools shut down in those early months.

Even one year on, in March 2021, employment among women remained about 5.3 per cent below where it sat in February 2020, compared to a drop of about 3.7 per cent for men, according to a report from the Labour Market Information Council.

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But as the economy gradually reopened over the summer and fall, women's prospects improved. Canada as a whole caught up with its pre-pandemic job numbers in September of this year, and according to Statistics Canada, the only age group of women that has yet to recover to its pre-pandemic employment level is the 55-plus category.

"Now if you look at younger women, their employment rate is higher than it was before the pandemic. A little more than one percentage point higher," said University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe.

"It's the same story for the 25-54 age group — their employment rate is one percentage point higher."

But Armine Yalnizyan, a Toronto-based economist and the Atkinson Foundation's Fellow on the Future of Workers, cautions against declaring the "she-cession" over. She pointed out that statistics offer an aggregate look at a population, and many individual women are still struggling with the impacts of the pandemic on their careers and finances.