Last week I read as article in the New York Times that talks how the recession is driving women back into the work force.
Many of the women in the article no longer have small children at home and had worked full time before having children, but the recession was driving them back to work.
“Many of these women are sending out job applications for the first time in years because their husbands were laid off, fear being laid off or had their salaries cut or because their family’s investments plunged in value. “
” Last February Trudi Foutts Loh felt compelled to find full-time work, some 20 years after she quit her job to care for her two children.”
Apparently almost 80% of the job losses have been men.
“What’s happened is 78 percent of the people who lost their jobs in the recession are men,” said Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.”
Here is one woman that was recently pushed back into the workforce after having a child.
“One of them is Patricia Smart. She quit her banking job 14 years ago when her son was born. But last April, her husband received a layoff notice.”
The percentage of women aged 20 and above in the work force has remained relatively flat during the recession, while the percentage of women aged 25 to 44 has increased 2.4 percent during the recession.
How about Homeschoolers
My local homeschool network of 200+ families usually sees a 15% turnover, with a 2% increase each year. That has been the trend for the last 5 years.
This year we have seen a 40% turnover with a 2% decrease. The high turnover is the most interesting. What this means is that many new families are starting to homeschool, while just as many are stopping.
Here are the reasons that new families have started homeschooling;
- Private school tuition is too expensive during the recession
- Sick of the trouble their children face with the public schools
- Homeschool networks and curriculum availability continue to increase
Here are the reasons that families have stopped homeschooling;
- Layoffs forcing parents back to work
- Children moving into harder subjects as they approach high school
- Increasing family size, too many children to teach
How About Next Year?
Many of the parents who where forces back to work, see this as a temporary setback to their plans to homeschool and are planning to get into a financial situation where they can return to homeschooling.
Also, private school tuition is not likely to drop and that will result in more families to consider homeschooling.
Next year I think we are likely to see a larger then average increase in homeschoolers as many of the families that have stopped homeschooling find ways to re-prioritize and adjust to the recession, while private school tuition costs continue to push more families that prefer not to use the public schools towards homeschooling.