Work it, Baby!

StatsCan released its Changes in Parental Work Time and Earnings study today. 

Not surprisingly, it reports:

Between 1980 and 2005, the time parents spent on the job rose substantially for families with children, mostly because of the rising labour market participation of mothers.

During this period, the proportion of families with two parents working on a full-time, full-year basis more than doubled from 15% to 32%.

Single-parent families, particularly single mothers, also increased their work time by substantial margins. Over that period, the proportion of single mothers with a full-time and full-year schedule rose from 43% to 51%.

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Two-parent families in all earnings groups saw increases in their work time but increases were greatest in the low and middle earnings groups. For example, the proportion of parents working full year and full time in the middle earnings group (comprising families who earned between $46,700 and $93,400 in 2005) tripled over the period, from 11% to 32%.

Single parents with low earnings also recorded significant increases in their work hours, especially lone mothers. Between 1980 and 2005, the proportion of single mothers with low earnings working on a full-year and full-time basis rose from 8% to 20%.

The study also examines the extent to which the rise in parental work time translated into higher annual earnings for families. Increases in earnings were divided into two parts: the part due to increases in parental work time, and the part due to increases in rates of pay.

Among two-parent families, increases in parental work time accounted for nearly one-half (45%) of the overall growth in earnings, with low and middle earnings families contributing more than two-thirds.

The rest of the growth (55%) was due to an increase in rates of pay, in large part because of rising wages among top earnings families. This helps explain the growing gap between top and bottom earnings families documented in other studies.

Among single mothers, increasing work hours contributed to one-third of the overall increase in annual earnings. These gains were mostly associated with the rising work hours of single mothers with low earnings.

Conversely, because single fathers increased their work time by much smaller amounts, most of the changes in their annual earnings were driven by changing rates of pay.

Right off the bat, that tells us several things.

First, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.

While lower-income single parents are struggling, single mothers have it especially tough -- and, indeed, other studies reveal that these families are among the poorest in the country.

More women work outside the home for pay. Ergo, there is a real need for affordable daycare spaces.

(Doesn't anybody question what the Harper government's $100 a month -- taxable -- pay-off has injected into the underground economy, and the lost tax revenues as a result? And how many of those under-the-table caretakers are struggling single mothers as well?)

Finally, this confirms that men make more -- since they didn't have to increase their hours as much to gain earnings.

And all that just from the news release.

Much more in the actual report, if you're interested.

Comments

[Jim M]

It is interesting that this post has not generated any reader comments at the time I am writing these words, yet the post above has ten reader responses (three of which are mine… shh!) Still, this post looks just as important, but for some reason all I had to comment on School Daze first.
My mother had a full-time job in a daycare with nine children, who, not so coincidentally, were my brothers and sisters. Another mother would usually drop off one or two of her own children for my mom to take care of also, for which my mother charged a nominal fee, while those other mothers went to work at brick and mortar jobs, where they could make the 'big' bucks. No prob, and my mom never complained about her pay or went on strike. She appreciated the bit of extra dough and I’m sure my father didn’t mind either since I suppose raising nine children on mostly just the single income of a public servant would not have been easy (even though looks harder for parents now), which probably explains why my father moonlighted as a sports referee a few nights a week after the day job was put to bed.
I don’t think they had any money problems because I didn’t discover those until I moved out, and I had no children. Go figure.
Another anomaly seems to be that there was no such thing as junior kindergarten when I enrolled in school back then, which means that I was taken care of at home by my mother for at least one more year than any child stays home with their own mother nowadays, if at all (besides home-schooled children, obviously). I wonder if this extra year I spent at home with my own mother had anything to do with the fact that the school curriculum looked like dog food by the time I got there, compared to my mother’s learned world.

[Jim M]

My mother's idea of fun after taking care of the brood all day was to go roller-skating. The pacers (or whatever those guys are called) didn't like how much faster she could skate them, though, but when they tried to get her to slow down, she would just say, "Leave me alone, it's my only night out."
A Roller-skating rink is actually where my father met my mother. It never occurred to me before that I would not be here today if it were not for roller-skates, and presumably stories about what goes on at roller rinks, like this famous one, for example:
http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Rollerskate_Song/3118558