Women over 40 are being trampled by the COVID-19 economy, this week in the war on workers

Women over 40 have been particularly hard-hit by the COVID-19 economy—and, in this as in just about every other piece of bad economic news, Black and Hispanic women have had it the worst. According to a recent AARP report, 14% of women aged 40 to 65 lost their jobs, 13% had their work hours cut, 9% were furloughed, and 4% had their salary or wages cut. Overall, 41% of women in this age group lost job-based income. But the pain was felt unequally: While 13% of white women and 14% of Asian women lost jobs, 23% of Latinas and 20% of Black women did.

After these work interruptions, many women continue to be unemployed in the long term—for six months or more—or to be underemployed. Nearly a third of the women who had looked for work while over 40 cited age discrimination as a source of difficulty. And the effect of these experiences is to make women more economically vulnerable, forcing them to take on credit card debt, borrow from family or friends, or take money out of savings.

“People don’t even return your calls or acknowledge receipt of your résumé,” one experienced public health professional told The Washington Post’s Michelle Singletary of the experience of job-hunting at 65. “I have so many friends my age who were either laid off or furloughed because of covid. They have not gone back to work, not because they don’t want to or need to—they can’t. There’s no work. It’s not that there’s no work, because we all know there’s a worker shortage. They just don’t want people our age.”