Editor’s note: Morning Money is a free version of POLITICO Pro Financial Services morning newsletter, which is delivered to our s each morning at 5:15 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. WHAT A RECESSION MEANS FOR WOMEN — The pandemic recession hit women hard, battering industries in which they make up a disproportionate share of workers. While many women have returned to the labor force and seen bigger wage gains in recent months, they’ve grappled with soaring inflation and now face the prospect of another slowdown and possible recession, which could cut their recovery short. Your MM host led a Women Rule discussion yesterday with a stellar panel of economic and business experts about the progress women have made since the pandemic, the outlook for the coming year and policies to mitigate the effects of a slowdown. Here are some key takeaways: Supporting women business owners “During the pandemic there were a number of women who left the workforce to start their own businesses — some out of necessity, some for the need of flexibility, being able to do remote work from home,” said Tene Dolphin, executive director of the National Women’s Business Council. “What we did see is huge growth in women-owned businesses and even minority women-owned businesses.” “I think what’s going to be important are the resources that support that continued growth,” she said. “A lot of them are solo entrepreneurs … So the need for them to grow and to increase their workforce is going to be critical.” Demographic divergence “After the heavy job losses for women during the pandemic, particularly around hospitality and leisure industries, and of course all the impacts for working mothers, we’re seeing the same bounceback … but that’s been particularly strong among college-educated women,” said Kristen Silverberg, president and COO of the Business Roundtable. “We still think we have a lot of work to do in terms of helping women without college degrees get back to the workforce,” she added. “So that’s where BRT is spending a lot of our efforts to help make sure we’re opening up jobs to those women as well.” A short or shallow recession “We are actually anticipating a brief yet shallow recession in the U.S. starting in the fourth quarter of this year and extending into the first quarter of next year,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board. “So slightly negative numbers in terms of quarterly annualized GDP growth. But then that’s going to be anchored by periods of stagflation, where you still have very weak growth and very elevated inflation. “With inflation, we think that the target that the Fed is looking at, which is 2 percent, is probably not going to be reached until 2024,” she added. CEOs ambivalent “We conduct a quarterly survey of our members,” Silverberg said. “This last quarter we saw one of the sharpest declines … in the history of the survey. But interestingly the index still was above the threshold we normally look at to indicate a recession. So it was a little bit ambivalent. Much more pessimistic than it was the quarter before, but still unclear whether we’re solidly heading into recession territory.” “While the biggest part of the job around inflation falls to the Fed, there’s a lot that the administration and Congress ought to be thinking about,” Silverberg added, including encouraging more domestic energy production, investing in domestic production of chips to help with semiconductor shortages, and easing the China tariffs. “So obviously risky territory, but we think there’s still room for some sound economic policy to try to keep our economy on solid footing.” Even without recession, less educated women are vulnerable “It’s almost always the case that more educated workers survive recessions better,” Peterson said. “Amid the labor shortages that we’ve been seeing, many companies — and even our own surveys of CEOs and C-suite members — have said, ‘Well, we’re willing to lower our requirements and lessen the amount of experience and education that you need,’” she said. “But if businesses start saying, ‘Well, we don’t need all of these workers, then it’s certainly going to be very difficult for workers who don’t have the education or the training, to get the remaining jobs that are available.” IT’S WEDNESDAY — Halfway to the holiday weekend! Have a tip or story idea? Hit us up: kdavidson@politico.com, aweaver@politico.com, or on Twitter @katedavidsonor @aubreeeweaver.
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