The U.S. economy took a severe hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered lockdowns that cost many workers their jobs beginning in March 2020.

While women in general experienced more job-related setbacks than men during this difficult period, the opposite is true for women veterans, according to recently published research from the University of Utah.

“We find that veteran women fared better than veteran men in terms of their employment outcomes during the pandemic. That was true in terms of income, but mostly in terms of hanging on to their jobs,” said co-author Sarah Small, an assistant professor of economics in the College of Social & Behavioral Science.

The result was a surprise because, in the general population, women typically endure greater labor-market setbacks than men, according to co-author Eunice Han, also a U economics professor.

“We found that compared to veteran males, veteran females have a less serious impact on their labor market outcome,” Han said. “We could consider this as a gender discrepancy among veterans, or we could consider this as a different channel for the labor market impact.”

Small and Han analyzed data from the Current Population Survey data, a nationally representative dataset that is collected on a monthly basis by the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the study period beginning with the 2020 pandemic lockdowns that began in March 2020, the team scrutinized questionnaire data for 30,000 women and 200,000 men who had served in the military.

“You’ve got to think of veterans as a different population of workers. They already had their career as soldiers, and this veteran status means that they’re going into a different life path,” Han said. “So they might take on a smaller workload, more flexibility because the first part of their career path is done.”

Women accounted for 13% of the sample, while today women account for about 18% of those on active duty, reflecting the increasing role women are playing in the U.S. armed forces. Veterans make up just 6% of the American workforce, a small but important share.

“Veterans have unique labor market experiences that warrant special attention. Their experiences working in the military and their enlistment criteria suggest that veteran workers will differ from non-veteran workers from the start, making the two groups often challenging to adequately compare,” the study said. “Enlistment criteria alone suggest that veterans will differ from non-veterans in a variety of ways, including educational attainment, health, citizenship, and criminal background.”

The data Han and Small examined included the person’s county of residence; citizenship status; employment status, including industry, occupation, whether they worked in the public sector or were represented by a union and income; education attainment; race; marital status; how many children they had at home. Not included was the branch of the military they served in.

“Holding all those things constant, we’re still observing these pretty substantial differences in terms of employment,” Small said. “It’s kind of surprising given we found the opposite trend in the general population, but it’s a little less surprising given what we know about the state of men broadly in the labor market and all these concerns about men’s mental health.”

The researchers were also able to tease out other notable findings. For example, they detected a significant employment advantage for veteran women in public sector jobs for Black, less educated and working moms without small children.

“There’s also a special module focused on COVID, which is where we got information about remote work,” Small said. “So that’s where we were able to see that women, on average among veterans, were doing more remote work.”

The option to work remotely may have helped keep women in their jobs while also reducing health risks associated with working around others during the pandemic. Previous studies have shown that women veterans have better access to social support and government assistance that might have helped through the pandemic lockdowns, according to Small.

“There’s literature on women veterans having this pretty substantial wage premium compared to women who are not veterans in that they have a lot of desirable labor market qualities, this toughness kind of thing, and ability to navigate patriarchal spaces,” Small said. “It might not be a story about men’s disadvantage, but rather a story about veteran women’s advantage.”

The study, “Labor Market Experiences of US Veterans During COVID-19: Women’s Relative Advantage,” appeared in the June edition of Eastern Economic Journal.

• Brian Maffly Science writer, University of Utah Communications
  801-573-2382 brian.maffly@utah.edu