I have three friends who have been laid off from marketing, advertising, and public relations positions. All women. All with master’s degrees. We have painful conversations about their struggles to find what’s next. Some of these women have been applying to positions for more than a year, relying on Medicaid and food stamps to get by. One had such deep disappointment in her voice, saying, “This is not where I thought I would be.” Another wondered whether she should give up her dream of becoming a writer to pursue a career with better hiring prospects.
At the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race, we understand that the conversation around women’s unemployment isn’t as simple as a skills mismatch. It’s a complex mix of labor market factors and a legacy of race and gender discrimination that changes over time. We make policy recommendations that take this into account and address the root issues of gender discrimination and labor-market inefficiency, rather than treating only symptoms. Part of that process requires not only interrogating how inequality is perpetuated at the individual level, but also how it is perpetuated systematically.
The design of the labor market, and any proposed solution, can either reproduce or disrupt the race-gender hierarchy. But currently, many solutions aren’t designed to disrupt anything. Take unemployment insurance (UI). Its purpose is to provide temporary financial assistance to unemployed workers who are out of work by no fault of their own. While the amount of financial assistance is calculated using a worker’s prior earnings, Black and Latina women are overrepresented in low-paying jobs due to occupational segregation. Their state UI benefit reinforces the same racial and gendered pay inequity from the labor market. This is where individual choice interacts with systemic inequality.
The Employment Trap
It’s up to you to find the jobs that match your skills, perform well on hiring skills assessments, or lean on your networks for opportunities. An individual’s perspective on what jobs they are qualified for also determines where they apply. This is a gendered experience, where women are typically less likely to apply for a position unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. This means talented women are more likely to shy away from advanced, higher-paying positions because they fear they’re not qualified. This effect cuts both ways: if job postings were more explicit about the skills required for the position, it would reduce ambiguity about the specific qualifications needed and draw more women to apply.
Valerie Wilson and Sandy Darity said it best: “…The persistent threat of unemployment, in combination with prohibitive conditions imposed by employer practices, public policy, incomplete information and job opportunities, and geographic immobility, means that workers cannot change jobs or employers easily and without cost.” In other words, unemployment is about who applies and who gets trapped.
There’s a solid historical record and empirical evidence showing discrimination is a significant factor in the persistence of racial disparities in the labor market. Wilson and Darity argue that we can’t rely on a competitive market to apply upward pressure on wages and close racial wage gaps. We must use interventions that expand the frameworks we use for understanding power, race, gender, and inequality to restructure systems and institutions to prevent discriminatory outcomes rather than enable them.
Job Training: Are You Upskilled?
Current race-neutral training can reproduce labor-market inequality because the labor market is already unequal. The training gap disproportionately affects Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Indigenous women, especially those in low-wage or segregated occupations. Race and gender discrimination in the labor market systematically depresses the returns to these women, while white men continue to receive privileged treatment in hiring, pay, and advancement. When training programs are implemented without considering existing race or gender inequity, those dynamics will be perpetuated through any interventions. Structural interventions can recognize–and address–how inequality persists in opportunities for education and employment. In the public sector, one think tank found job training is one of America’s most well-funded and poorly performing public programs. For people from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds, the current rigid nature of the programs leaves people with precarious financial circumstances or health issues unable to dedicate their time to learning, making it extremely difficult to make progress towards new skills.
Targeted job-training programs that account for how race or gender discrimination stratifies the labor market can place qualified workers in jobs that match their skills. The solution must be two-fold, connecting women with jobs they should apply for despite their own feelings about qualifications, and placing them in positions where discriminatory hiring practices typically shut them out. Job training cannot repair labor-market inequality if it ignores the race- and gender-shaped networks, expectations, and constraints that determine who can turn training into stable work. In this way, it fails to reach everyone equally.
What You Can’t Measure, You Can’t Fix
Last month, Florida’s Board of Governors voted to remove Introduction to Sociology from the general education curriculum at the state’s 12 public universities. The state lawmakers argued that teachings on race, gender, and sexuality “distort significant historical events or include curriculum that teaches identity politics.” Dismantling frameworks that help us understand structural inequality doesn’t mean the inequality disappears. Instead, it steers the conversation toward individual blame. What’s happening in Florida is not an isolated case.
Structural analysis helps us better understand inefficiencies in the labor market, which can lead to better-designed labor policy. Yet, the tools for this type of analysis are being politically dismantled. Race- and gender-conscious policy is under mounting legal and political pressure, from post-Students for Fair Admissions legal challenges to the rollback of DEI programs at the federal level. But retreating from structural solutions in the face of political pressure and diverting attention to individual failure distracts from the root causes of inequality.
In recent conversations, some people in my circle think the solution is up to the individual to upskill—that too many people aren’t doing enough to get the new job skills they need. In other words, they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. There are valid reasons that make upskilling difficult for the very groups most vulnerable in a changing labor market.
Upskilling assumes time, money, stability, and network access that many displaced workers do not have. For people who are financially strained, aging out of certain sectors, or outside strong networks, self-directed retraining is not a neutral option. The conditions that make self-directed reskilling possible are the same conditions many displaced workers lack.
If you are struggling financially, you might not have the time or resources to maximize skills on your own. Tech growth can make job transitions more difficult for aging populations to keep up with. Higher levels of education don’t guarantee lower levels of unemployment, as I explored last month. If we want better labor market outcomes, training must be designed around real constraints, not idealized individual choice.
My friends are not struggling because they lack ambition, credentials, or work ethic.
The labor market was never designed to value them equally. Systems meant to help displaced workers find their footing were not built with them in mind. We should take conversations about unemployment beyond individual failure and examine the structural factors that enable it. The solution is clear. Targeted universalism in job training means creating programs that are designed with specific barriers Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian, and Multiracial women face, rather than assuming a neutral worker, which hides the experiences of women in the aggregate. Women deserve policies that meet them where they are, not where we think they should be.
Lily S. Johnson is a former research assistant. She worked on projects focused on financial well-being and menstrual health.