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NWLC Responds to Biden Administration’s Economic Relief Plan
(Washington D.C.) The following is a statement from Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center:
“The plan put forward by the incoming Biden administration is a critical rescue effort for millions of women devastated by the continued impacts of this mismanaged pandemic. Even as Black, brown, and immigrant women have disproportionately had their lives and livelihoods wrecked by the pandemic, previous relief packages have failed to center their needs at the scale demanded by this crisis. This plan remedies many of those missteps by focusing on priorities that support women of color–including support for child care, boosted unemployment insurance, a $15 minimum wage for all, paid sick days and paid family leave, housing and food assistance, a focus on addressing health disparities and expanding health coverage, and vital funds to stabilize state and local governments. The need for relief has only grown more dire over these last months due to the Trump administration’s incompetent response. From rescue to recovery, the Biden-Harris administration must continue to put women at the center of their pandemic response to meet their promise of building back better.”
According to analyses from the National Women’s Law Center:
- Of the 140,000 net jobs lost in December of 2020, 100% were women’s jobs
- 27,000 women entered the labor force after 863,000 exited in September. However, 154,000 Black women left the labor force last month, marking the largest one-month drop in their labor force size since March and April 2020.
- There were nearly 2.1 million fewer women in the labor force in December than there were in February of 2020, before the pandemic started.
- Forty percent of unemployed women have been unemployed for six months or more.
- Nearly a third of Black, non-Hispanic women report being behind on rent, more than twice the rate of white, non-Hispanic men or white, non-Hispanic women.
- More than one in five Black, non-Hispanic women and Latinas reported not having enough to eat
- About six in ten Black, non-Hispanic women and Latinas were in a household that had lost income since March.
- Nearly two in five Latinas, nearly three in ten Black, non-Hispanic women, and more than one in four Asian, non-Hispanic women expect their households to lose employment income in the next month, compared to 21.5% of white, non-Hispanic men and 21.2% of white, non-Hispanic women.
