Women powered pandemic shift toward higher paying jobs, but pay gap persists: RBC

Women have powered a current shift towards higher-paying and -skilled jobs, however a pay hole will persist till they stop being outnumbered by males in senior administration positions, says a brand new report.

Canada’s labour market noticed almost 200,000 ladies stream into jobs involving much less in-person contact and sometimes considerably increased wages after many pandemic measures had been lifted, the Tuesday report launched by the Royal Bank of Canada discovered.

Of the $21 billion in extra revenue created by the motion to increased paid sectors over the pandemic, $9 billion or 43 per cent was funnelled to ladies. This amounted to fifteen per cent of the overall increase to ladies’s earnings throughout the pandemic restoration.

“But men still made up the majority of the income gains and much of that is likely because the roles that women and men occupy are still different,” mentioned Carrie Freestone, an economist with RBC Economics.

“Even though we see women in these higher paid sectors, often the senior leadership roles are disproportionately filled by men.”

Her analysis discovered males made up greater than two-thirds of senior management positions regardless that the variety of men and women within the labour market are equal.

Some of the inequities had been much more pronounced amongst mother and father.

Freestone discovered fathers with younger youngsters had been way more more likely to be senior managers, filling 10 per cent of such roles, whereas moms made up lower than three per cent of the positions.

“So it appears that there’s a link between having a kid and the fact that you may be less likely to take on a senior management role,” she mentioned.

Much of her analysis is predicated on the ladies who flooded again into the workforce after pandemic lockdowns, pushing participation within the labour market amongst working ladies to a document excessive of 85.6 per cent in January.

But many did not return to prior jobs or industries and as an alternative sought work that got here with increased paid and “more productive” roles, the report discovered.

“High-contact sectors” like hospitality, for instance, skilled an exodus of roughly 178,000 workers, after they had been compelled to shut to quell COVID-19, mentioned Freestone.

Many of the employees that fled these sectors had been ladies. Despite filling about 55 per cent of jobs in these sectors earlier than the pandemic, ladies made up 80 per cent of the motion away from them.

RBC estimated almost 140,000 ladies streamed out of jobs in excessive contact sectors with many searching for roles in low-contact industries — skilled, scientific and technical providers and finance, insurance coverage, and actual property.

“The majority of people who moved from these sectors into higher paying sectors did have a degree or a college diploma, so a lot of that was potentially women who were overqualified for positions moving into sectors that better fit their level of educational attainment,” mentioned Freestone.

“And I think maybe women working in the hospitality sector saw other women who were able to work from home working in these industries like tech and finance, so I think there was definitely a pull to move into these industries that were more flexible.”

The reshaping of their careers was aided by extra versatile work preparations and inexpensive childcare, and lots of had been in the hunt for much less COVID-19 threat and better earnings.

However, lots of their salaries nonetheless path their male counterparts.

Though ladies accounted for 60 per cent of jobs created in finance, insurance coverage, and actual property over the course of the pandemic, ladies with levels and dealing in finance, insurance coverage, actual property and rental leasing earned roughly 85 cents for each greenback earned by males.

Across all sectors, ladies made a median of 89 cents for each greenback a person made in 2021, Statistics Canada’s newest information exhibits.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed March 7, 2023.