Families Continue to Rely on Wives As Breadwinners Post-Recession

The negative outcomes of the Great Recession have been multifaceted, affecting many areas of family economic well-being. The U.S. economy lost 8.7 million jobs between December 2007 and January 2010.1 Although the recession officially ended in June 2009, the national unemployment rate remains approximately 1.5 percentage points higher than the pre-recession rate, even though the total number of jobs lost during the recession has been recovered.2 Similarly, long-term unemployment is prevalent, with length of unemployment averaging 37.1 weeks.3 Furthermore, involuntary part-time work increased during the recession and has remained relatively constant.4 These statistics translate into continued hardship for many Americans, exemplified in the decline in median household income since the onset of the Great Recession.5 The recession affected men’s employment more than women’s, with 69 percent of the jobs that were lost being held by men.6 Overall unemployment reached a high of 10.0 percent in October 2009, with men’s unemployment at 11.2 percent and women’s at 8.7 percent. The unemployment rate has slowly declined during the recovery and was down to 6.4 percent for men and 6.2 percent for women in June 2014.7 Married-couple families have responded to husbands’ job loss with an increased dependence on wives’ earnings. Research on the Great Recession shows that wives whose husbands stopped working were more likely to enter the labor force and, among wives already employed, more likely to increase their hours working for pay.8 Despite increased employment among wives with husbands who experienced job loss, overall wives’ employment decreased during the Great Recession from 72 percent in 2007 to 71 percent in 2009 and decreased to 69 percent in 2012. The Great Recession affected some areas of the United States more CARSEY RESEARCH