The writer is a senior fellow at Harvard University and advises the UK Department of Health and Social Care
Who do you fire first? As this crisis scythes through the economy, bosses are making painful decisions about who to let go. New hires, especially the young, are always at risk from the phenomenon of “last in, first out”. Old hires can start to look expensive. But while other postwar economic downturns have been “man-cessions”, this one is hitting women harder.
That’s not how it looked at the start of this crisis, with “male sectors” looking vulnerable and men at greater personal risk from Covid-19. Yet in the US, women accounted for 55 per cent of jobs lost in April, compared to only 22 per cent during the 2008 financial crisis. In the UK, 17 per cent of women reported being newly unemployed that month, compared to 13 per cent of men.