Women, work and the recession in Wales

Report reveals hardship suffered by Welsh women in the recession.

A major new report has revealed the impact the economic crisis had had on women in Wales.

Five years after the global recession hit, independent research by the Bevan Foundation suggests women in Wales are experiencing a delayed impact.

The report claims that while traditionally male-dominated jobs in industry were the first to go, women in Wales are now experiencing a decline in employment as a knock-on affect of the recession.

According to the research, male unemployment in Wales has been static or declining over the last two years, but women have been hit by a 12 per cent rise in unemployment over the same period.

The figures are ‘obscured’, according to the Foundation, by the increase in the number of older women staying in employment as the female retirement age increases.

In Wales there are now nine per cent more women aged 50-64 in work than there were in 2008.

And unemployment among young women has increased during the recession by more than 20 per cent within four years.

Victoria Winckler, director of the Bevan Foundation and author of the report, said: “The labour market is very challenging for women.

“As well as the effects of the recession and public spending cuts, the increase in pension age is reducing job turn-over while the welfare reform has increased the number of women looking for work – nearly 15,000 lone parents and 22,000 claimants of incapacity benefits have come onto the job market recently.”

The Welsh government’s equalities minister, Jane Hutt, said: “This report shows how decisions being made by the UK government are affecting the lives of women in Wales.

“There is clear evidence that reducing budgets and welfare reform are impacting on single parents and carers, the majority of whom are women.”

The figures also show that women in Wales are among the lowest paid in the UK.

In 2011, the average earnings for women in the public sector in Wales came in at £12.70 an hour, the second lowest in the UK, while at £8.50 an hour, they are the lowest paid private sector workers.

And so, in the public sector, women’s full-time median gross hourly earnings are 91 per cent of men’s compared with 79 per cent in the private sector.

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, Winckler said that four in ten women in Wales work in the public sector. It is therefore not surprising that women in Wales have felt the full force of public sector cuts.

According to the Fawcett Society, women make up 65 per cent of the UK’s public sector workers, and 75 per cent of the UK’s local government workforce.

In 2011 evidence from the GMB union revealed that women accounted for almost 70 per cent of job losses in Welsh councils.

In 19 councils in England and Wales, women made up 100 per cent of job losses.

A recent study by the TUC revealed that two thirds of  the UK’s workers who were made redundant since 2008 were men, but claimed the last two years have been the worst for female redundancies, reflecting public sector cuts made by the coalition government.

And the latest unemployment figures for Wales show it is lagging behind the rest of the UK.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), unemployment in Wales rose by 6,000 to 8.6 per cent in the last three months of 2012, while throughout the UK the number of people out of work fell by 14,000 to 7.8 per cent.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith said: “These figures show another big increase in full-time jobs, half a million more British people in work over the past year and more women in employment than ever before.”

Last year in Wales, female unemployment hit a record high.

The welfare reform has increased the number of women looking for work – nearly 15,000 lone parents and 22,000 claimants of incapacity benefits have come onto the job market recently.

“Many of these women have not worked for some time, with low self-confidence and rusty skills,” Victoria Winckler said.

The findings of this most recent report suggest that the recession is far from over for women in Wales.

And so while men’s employment starts to show signs of recovery, we are likely to see the number of Welsh women out of work continue to rise.