The Economic Impacts of the COVID‐19 Pandemic in Australia: A Closer Look at Gender Gaps in Employment, Earnings and Education

Abstract

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, this article considers the longer-lasting economic impacts on the Australian workforce through a gender lens. Using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, it analyses changes in employment, earnings and educational participation relative to the pre-pandemic trends that were predicted to have otherwise occurred. Despite women's employment moving back towards pre-pandemic levels more rapidly than men's, the pandemic also saw a widening of the gender gap in earnings and a larger fall in women's educational participation. This paper highlights the need for ongoing monitoring of labour market indicators through a gender lens to inform more responsive policy design.

Understanding Covid-19 emergency social security measures as a from of basic income: Lessons from Australia

“…Other forms of conditionality continued during the pandemic, including compulsory income management, where some recipients of social security compulsorily have portions of their social security quarantined onto an issued ‘debit card’ to reduce their ability to withdraw cash and restrict purchases of alcohol. 6 Compulsory income management has been shown to have negative impacts on people's financial and emotional wellbeing (Roche et al, 2021).…”

“…Such commitments underpinned the government's commitment to uphold unequal structures rather than using the pandemic as an opportunity to restructure economies more equitably. Furthermore, this inequality was exacerbated along gendered and racialised lines, where women undertook the brunt of unpaid care work leading to what commentators have called the 'pink recession' (Duke, 2020), where the majority of those losing jobs during the lockdowns were women, who were also expected to undertake the majority of unpaid care work that increased because of the lockdowns (Risse and Jackson, 2021). Matthewman and Huppatz (2020, p. 697) argued that this pink recession has the potential to undo much of the 'hard-won progress that women have made to increase their representation in the paid workforce'.…”

Introduction

“…The article by Risse (2023) specifically examines the impact of COVID‐19 and policy responses on gender gaps in labour market outcomes. Female employment has been much more adversely affected than in previous recessions, due to the very different industry‐level impact of COVID‐19.…”

Impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on ethnically diverse communities

“…Extensive government support, including a substantial job subsidy scheme and a large increase in welfare payments to those out of work, may have helped to relieve the economic effects (Lim et al, 2021). However, despite Australia's success in managing the pandemic, government support was not universal, infections impacted some communities more than others and evidence has emerged of substantial differences and inequities in the impact of COVID‐19 across society (Risse, 2023; Shergold et al, 2022). This raises critical questions as to how widespread the success in containing the virus and its flow‐on effects was and how it was felt across society.…”