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