00:00:00
Certainly, we know that the economy is going through a bit of a rough patch with persistent
00:00:03
inflation, higher gas and food prices, and a bit of a softer labor market. So how are those elements
00:00:10
impacting families and maybe more importantly, working mothers? Corinne Lowe is an associate
00:00:15
professor of business economics and public policy here at the Wharton School. Corinne,
00:00:19
great to catch up again. Great to see you, Dan. So yeah, you said it all. I mean, American families
00:00:25
are feeling what I call the squeeze, which is about not just money, but also time, because
00:00:33
what they're finding is, you know, costs are rising. They feel like they need to put more
00:00:37
time into their careers. The demands that we place on parents have increased. The time we spent
00:00:43
parenting has doubled across the span of a generation. And at the same time,
00:00:48
childcare costs are rising. So a lot of families are saying, you know, we can't afford not to have
00:00:53
somebody in the labor market. But at the same time, it's hard for us to afford the childcare
00:00:57
for somebody to go and work. So, you know, they're in kind of a catch-22.
00:01:02
And really, for women who are working mothers, you and I have talked over the last few years
00:01:09
about the financial gap between what men are paid and women are paid. If you're a single
00:01:14
working mother, and you have all of these dynamics going on, and you throw in inflation and all these
00:01:20
other components, it has to be one of the most challenging times that they have had, and maybe
00:01:26
even more so than what we went through with the pandemic. Yeah, that's right, because when you
00:01:32
think about what it costs to work, obviously you work to earn money, but what does it cost to work?
00:01:38
Well, that's gas in the car, and gas prices right now are astonishing, right? And that's
00:01:44
childcare. And childcare, you talked about inflation, the cost of childcare has actually
00:01:48
outpaced the cost of inflation. So childcare has actually increased more rapidly than the already
00:01:53
punishing rate of inflation. And so, you know, absolutely, that is putting the squeeze on working
00:01:57
mothers. And then when you get to the fact that women are paid less than men, if you are a, you
00:02:02
know, single working mom, you're supporting a family on that salary, you know, it's very, very
00:02:07
difficult. And that's why I actually think it's so important. You remember the New York Times
00:02:11
article a while back that was like, are women ruining the workplace? And that's why I think
00:02:16
it's so important that we reframe because so much of the discourse has treated women's work as
00:02:22
though it's some kind of kind of like optional hobby. Like, you know, women are doing it for
00:02:26
feminism. They're doing it because, you know, they want to for their own self-fulfillment. But
00:02:32
millions of women are supporting American families. They're not working for fun. They're
00:02:37
working to put food on the table. They're working to keep the lights on. And that's what gets lost
00:02:43
when we talk about this dynamic as though it's optional. It's not optional. It's something that
00:02:48
is so essential that we make possible and that we figure out how to bring those costs down
00:02:53
so that families can continue to thrive. Well, and then there are also the components,
00:02:58
not only what they are dealing with in their jobs, in their careers, but what they're dealing
00:03:03
with at home as well, because a lot of the data says that working mothers are still contributing
00:03:09
a lot, maybe even more so than their husbands if they're married or their partners, in the home
00:03:18
setting in terms of, you know, keeping everything kind of running, setting the doctor's appointments,
00:03:24
the banking dynamics, you know. So you add that on top of it and it's even more challenging.
00:03:30
That's exactly right. So thanks for saying it for me so I didn't have to. You know, that's my paper,
00:03:35
winning the bread and baking it too, that even women who are breadwinners, women who are the
00:03:40
ones who are bringing home a significant paycheck and maybe even the sole earner in a household,
00:03:46
they still do more. If they are married to a man, they still do more at home. They still do twice
00:03:51
as much cooking and cleaning as their lower earning male partners. And that's one of the
00:03:56
notes I want to make as we look at broader economic trends and economic change. And AI
00:04:01
is really shaking up the labor market and it is shaking up our idea of who is going to be a high
00:04:09
earner, because you might have a couple where he is a computer programmer, she's a nurse, maybe he
00:04:15
out-earned her, right? But if those jobs go away, that earning dynamic might shift because healthcare,
00:04:21
very AI-proof industry, because it's about care, it's about being at the bedside. And so she's
00:04:28
still going to be bringing home that paycheck. And the question is, is he ready to evolve into
00:04:32
a new role of actually doing more at home? Is it too early to truly understand what kind of
00:04:38
impact that AI is having or will have in the future on the careers of working mothers?
00:04:45
I do think it's too early to understand, because I think, personally, I think what we're going to
00:04:51
see is that even though some women's jobs are going to be displaced by AI, I actually think
00:04:58
that a lot of the sectors that women work in, as I said, such as teaching, such as healthcare,
00:05:02
of course, those aren't all the jobs that women do. Women are professors like me, women are lawyers,
00:05:06
women are all sorts of things. But some of the sectors that women work in are more AI-proof
00:05:11
than some of the sectors that men work in. And as a result, as I said, I think what's really
00:05:17
interesting is thinking about, are we prepared to rescale men, to reconsider gender roles in light
00:05:25
of potentially women's earning power within the household getting stronger over the next few
00:05:30
decades with the rise of AI? How has the work-from-home component played into the equation
00:05:37
now? I mean, you and I talked about this during the pandemic and how it could potentially have
00:05:42
an impact on women's careers. You've also written about the motherhood penalty. But how is that
00:05:47
dynamic of work-from-home kind of evolving, do you think?
00:05:51
Well, we have seen a lot of companies are trying to drive return to office, right? And the reason
00:05:57
is because so much research shows that there's things that happen when we are together,
00:06:01
in terms of idea sharing, in terms of innovation, that just don't happen the same way at home. And
00:06:08
so a lot of companies are also considering hybrid models. And that's why, you know, I have
00:06:12
been encouraging firms to think, you know, if I want return to office, if I want the benefits of
00:06:18
being together and synchronous, does that need to be, you know, 8 a.m. till 9 p.m.? Or can I get
00:06:26
those benefits, you know, from 10 to 4, of kind of core hours where we try to be in office, but then
00:06:31
let people, you know, take care of other things and let people kind of be more flexible for that
00:06:36
second part of their workload? And so I think that's some of the things companies might want
00:06:41
to consider. But when we think about work from home, you know, what's interesting is, I think,
00:06:46
because when you're in the office, you're connecting with other humans. And that's the
00:06:50
piece that AI can't replace. I do think people should be thinking, if I am in a work-from-home
00:06:55
job, I should be more worried that I'm more replaceable. The less human contact that I have,
00:07:01
right, the more that I actually need to be concerned about the long-term trajectory of
00:07:07
this job category. So I think we should be looking for ways to create more human connection, but we
00:07:13
also shouldn't be sacrificing the very real need to do care labor and to do other types of
00:07:19
production, like home production, in our lives. And so that's about setting those boundaries on
00:07:24
those in-office times and not expecting it to kind of bleed into all hours. So you mentioned
00:07:28
a moment ago about men maybe adjusting how they are thinking about work and the workforce.
00:07:34
But larger scale, since we've had the pandemic and now we have this period of time,
00:07:38
it made me wonder if families in general are thinking about and looking at ways where they
00:07:45
potentially are tweaking their lifestyles longer term. Because I think a lot of us believe that
00:07:51
while we're in this period of time now, there's probably another crisis that's going to come
00:07:55
around the corner, maybe a year, two years, three years, whatever it is down the line.
00:07:59
And so I'm wondering if we're almost going through a little bit or getting ready for
00:08:03
more transition in our lives. Yes, I do think that we are looking at a period of economic
00:08:09
turmoil ahead. And I think, again, from a gender perspective, since that's what I study,
00:08:15
to be ready for that, you have to be ready to have either partner earn more, to have either
00:08:20
partner be the one who's stepping up their hours in the labor force. And I think what makes us
00:08:24
ready for that is being flexible in those gender roles. Is it being OK for dad to be the one to do
00:08:30
pickups if suddenly mom's career is more promising? Is it being OK for dad to be the one who's doing
00:08:35
the grocery shopping and the cooking? But the other thing is just from a personal finance
00:08:40
perspective that American families should be thinking about right now, making sure that they
00:08:44
have those emergency funds, making sure that they have those plans in case they do get laid off.
00:08:50
And just thinking through that scenario, because you want to think through it before
00:08:55
it gets to you. So thinking, what would I do if I got laid off from my job? What places would I
00:09:01
apply? Are my contacts active? Have I reached out recently and had some coffee chats with people
00:09:06
in my industry or in adjacent industries I'm interested in? So I think we can all afford to
00:09:13
do a little bit of saving, not just of money for a rainy day, but saving up in terms of our
00:09:20
contacts, our human capital, our relationship capital so that we are prepared for a period
00:09:25
of turmoil. How are companies reacting to all this? Because you and I, I remember talking a while back
00:09:31
about, you know, companies adapting to a degree to the work from home and people having to deal
00:09:37
with all the other dynamics in their life. As long as they were able to get their work done,
00:09:41
they may be working more of a fractured workday, but they're still putting in their eight hours.
00:09:47
Maybe it's over the course of 12 hours. So are companies more receptive now than even before
00:09:54
the pandemic about the dynamics of everything that's going on in people's lives right now?
00:10:01
Well, I think we see two opposing forces, right? One is that the pandemic did teach us that we
00:10:07
can do a certain portion of our work asynchronously. So in the data, we do see a lot
00:10:12
more work from home. We see a lot more hybrid models. People who even have in-office jobs
00:10:17
are not going to the office five days a week. They might be going more like four days a week. So
00:10:21
we just learned that some of this can happen over Zoom, but we also learned that there's some stuff
00:10:26
that is not replaceable and we don't want everybody working from home. And that's why a lot
00:10:31
of companies have been doing return to office, right? But the opposing force, along with the
00:10:35
firms learning and potentially becoming more innovative in their structures, the opposing
00:10:40
force is the soft labor market. And when you have a soft labor market, firms have more bargaining
00:10:45
power. And so we just saw Zoom and Deloitte cut maternity leave. And this is the first time we've
00:10:55
heard of a big cut like this. What we've been hearing is firms adding benefits, firms saying
00:10:59
that they are increasing their benefit package. Now Zoom and Deloitte, two major companies,
00:11:03
come out and say, you know what, we're scaling it back. We're cutting back the number of months
00:11:07
we offer for maternity leave. We are cutting back on who is covered. Certain categories of
00:11:11
employees are going to have fewer months than others. And I think the reason that they can do
00:11:16
that is because of the soft labor market. And so those two forces are going to be fighting each
00:11:20
other, where on one hand, companies were making progress, but now they sense an opportunity that
00:11:25
says, wait a minute, you know, jobs are in demand. We can afford to spend a little bit less to recruit
00:11:31
and retain our employees.
00:11:33
Corinne, great to talk to you again. Thanks very much.
00:11:36
Thank you, Dan. Always a pleasure.
00:11:38
Thank you. Corinne Lowe, Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy
00:11:41
here at the Wharton School.
