Blog

March is Women’s History Month, though here at the National Partnership, we foreground women every month! Unfortunately as we all saw during President Trump’s Joint Address before Congress on Tuesday, he is more focused on performing for his base, instead of actually helping women thrive economically.

Today’s monthly Jobs Report release shows that women across the board continue to experience close to historically low unemployment rates. However, that could be because people are staying put in their jobs as the “Great Stay” starts to take hold, with stagnant hiring rates at levels normally associated with much higher unemployment rates.

But today’s Jobs Report, with data collected about three weeks ago, doesn’t capture the full extent of the extreme economic whiplash we have all been experiencing, such as the wholesale firing of integral public servants who protect the health, safety and financial security of the American people. Federal government jobs (excluding USPS) were down 6,700 in February, but we suspect more losses will begin to show up in the data next month. Other signals, like the slowing economic activity, higher weekly unemployment claim filings, and surging layoffs all point to an economy that is slowing down, if not stalling out.

The federal government is also the single largest employer of women in the country and is an especially important employer for Black, Native and veteran women – cuts to this workforce will harm communities across the country both directly and indirectly.

Their gleeful campaign against federal workers is just one example of the ways in which President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s policies are threatening the livelihoods of, and harming, millions of women.

While they purport to be “saving” taxpayer dollars, they might actually be throwing us into a recession, with the Atlanta Federal Reserve projecting a 2.4% shrinking of GDP in Q1 2025, a true crash out from the 2.3% growth seen in Q4 2024. That contraction looks even worse when you compare to the economy we could have if we more fully supported women in the labor market. Compared to women’s labor force rates in peer nations who have policies like paid leave, child care & more, our lower levels of women’s participation mean we have lost out on ~$7 trillion of additional economic activity over the past decade – roughly 3 percent of GDP.

At the same time, playing hot potato with broad-based, non-strategic tariffs against our largest trade partners is leading to business and consumer uncertainty and won’t stop the slide in consumer spending and consumer sentiment anytime soon. It’s been almost 100 years since the last time America instituted large tariffs, which accelerated the slide into the Great Depression. This was also during the Jim Crow era, before World War II brought millions of women into the workforce, and the Civil Rights Act required fair access to jobs and fair treatment at work to Black Americans. Therefore, the last time our economy experienced broad tariffs, women were not working outside of the home in large numbers, except for Black women who have always been required to provide un- and underpaid labor in America. Research suggests these Trump tariffs could particularly hit items like clothing and food that women spend a higher percentage of their income on compared to men; with the gender wage gap costing the typical woman over $14,000 annually, women can ill afford these nonsensical price increases.

The gender wage gap, which widened last year for the first time in 20 years, begets a gender wealth gap, meaning women are much less likely than men to be able to weather economic downturns like a recession. The amount of economic damage that President Trump and Elon Musk have set into motion in fewer than 50 days could be – to a maniacal movie villain – seen as impressive. But recessions are horrible beasts that lead to millions losing their jobs, more “deaths of despair”, and long-felt economic scarring, as any Millennial can attest to.

It’s beyond time for Congress to come together and save the American people and the global economy from a recession built on cruelty.

Read our full analysis of today’s Jobs Report on X (formerly Twitter).

Open the full thread in a new window.