The White House Summit on Working Families

Fighting for working families; strengthening our economy.

Building on actions he already has taken to help create real, lasting economic security for working families, President Obama recently announced concrete initiatives that will create more opportunities for hardworking families to get ahead.

In collaboration with the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), President Obama hosted the “Summit on Working Families.”

The president has taken numerous executive actions to help workers, including raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, expanding retirement opportunities, strengthening overtime protections, and signing an Executive Order that protects workers from being retaliated against by their boss if they discuss their wages.

Goals include protecting pregnant working women, increasing investment in research to understand the economic benefits of paid leave, expanding apprenticeships for women, targeting resources to help more women enter higher-paying job fields, and making childcare more affordable for working families.

The interaction between family and work lives have profound implications on the nation’s economy. Most workers have caregiving responsibilities for others: children, elderly parents, aunts or uncles, spouses, or adult children with disabilities, including returning and disabled veterans. Trying to balance bread-winning and caregiving responsibilities without the support of work-family policies designed to help families navigate these complexities is leaving too many families stressed, exhausted, and burdened by work-family conflicts.

The president’s approach to helping with what working families deal with every day reflects his personal experience as a child of a single mother as well as his understanding that to stay competitive and economically successful, we must have workplaces that meet the demands of our modern era.

Over the past five decades the dynamics of the family unit have changed. The choices that families face as individuals are intimately linked to the success of the economy. Many workers are choosing companies based on their family-friendly policies, and companies that adopt such policies are better able to attract and retain talent—leading to greater job satisfaction and improved productivity.

The United States is one of three countries in the world, and the only developed nation, that does not have mandatory paid parental-leave policies. As a result, aside from a few states and municipalities that have adopted paid parental- or sick-leave policies, it is up to businesses to offer this important benefit.

Studies show that family-friendly workplace policies can enhance businesses’ profitability. However, many companies report that they lack the tools and expertise to redesign their workplaces to capture this competitive advantage. Too many workplaces still have policies that belong in a Mad Men episode rather than 2014.

Popular rankings and lists such as the 100 Best Companies list, compiled each year by Working Mother magazine, evaluate companies with over 500 employees on their workplace policies on parental leave, back-up and sick-childcare, career advancement, and workplace flexibility. Such rankings help working women and men identify family-friendly companies. However, only 11% of private sector employers offer formal paid leave specifically for family reasons.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees unpaid leave but covers only about 60% of workers. Men are joining women in prioritizing jobs that allow more flexibility, require less travel, or include paid paternity leave.

A 2014 survey of high-skilled working fathers conducted by researchers at Boston College found that 89% of fathers who planned to have another child reported that paid paternity leave is an important consideration in seeking a new job. Likewise, 95% of these working fathers reported that workplace flexibility policies that allowed them to actively engage with their children is an important job characteristic.

Nine Facts about American Families and Work

Fact 1: Mothers are increasingly the household breadwinners.

Mothers are bringing home more family income than ever before. Their income is not just supplemental, it is increasingly a necessary source of funds to pay for childcare, housing, transportation, and other essentials.

More than 40% of mothers are now the sole or primary source of income for the household. This reflects both a rise of single mothers, 65% of whom participate in the labor force, and the fact that more married women are out-earning their husbands. Closing the gender wage gap is important for improving family outcomes, such as reducing the number of individuals, especially children, who live in poverty.

Fact 2: Fathers are increasingly family caregivers.

More than ever before men are playing the role of the primary caregiver in the household. Today, one in five fathers is the primary caregiver of preschool-age children when the mother is employed. In the past 25 years, the number of families with a stay-at-home dad and a working mom doubled.

In the last four decades, the number of father-only families more than tripled, and currently 7% of families with children are father-only families. In keeping with the shift in marriages to equal partnerships based on shared responsibilities, in more and more families both partners contribute to earning and caregiving. Men change diapers, give bottles, housework, and bring children to and from school.

Although fathers continue to spend less time on childcare than mothers, this gap has narrowed over the past 10 years, and fathers are increasingly performing caregiving activities traditionally done by mothers. Overall, fathers are spending more time on childcare and housework, but have not reduced their paid work hours by a commensurate amount.

Fathers are doing 4.6 more hours of childcare per week and 4.4 more hours of housework per week, yet two-thirds of men and nearly three-quarters of women think that men should be spending more time caring for children.

Fact 3: Women make up nearly half of today’s labor force.

Today women make up 47% of the labor force, compared to 38% in 1970. While women continue to work fewer hours than men on average, they are working more hours than they used to, and their share of total hours has risen 10 percentage points over the past 40 years. This growth in women’s paid work was responsible for nearly a fifth of the growth in real GDP in the 1970s and 1980s—adding $2.0 trillion to our GDP.

In 1990, the U.S. ranked seventh among 24 developed countries in women’s labor-force participation, but by 2012 the U.S. had fallen to the 16th position. Not unrelated, the U.S. increasingly lags behind other developed countries in providing flexible-work and paid-leave arrangements that enable all workers to be a part of the workforce and build long-term careers, while also providing care for their families.

The lesson is clear: If we want to increase the pace of economic growth, we should make it easier for more men and women to participate in the labor force. Over the past fifteen years, the only gains in women’s labor-force participation have come from those age 55 and over. However, women have continued to make gains as a share of the workforce, both because the hours gap between men and women has continued to narrow, and because men’s labor-force participation has continued its long-term decline.

Fact 4: Women are increasingly among our most skilled workers, attaining the majority of college degrees, and deepening their work experiences.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s women’s educational attainment grew, and by the 1990s they were as likely as men to graduate college. Although the rise in college attendance takes time to show up in the labor force, already women are entering a wide range of careers and deepening their work experience.

Moreover, the education pattern of young workers makes it clear that women will soon be the majority of college-educated workers.

In 2013, women age 25-34 were more than 20% more likely than men to be college graduates.

Fact 5: Most children live in households where both parents work.

Today in both married and single-parent families, both parents are working in more than six out of 10 households. The numbers also hold for families in which the youngest child is under one year old. While more families have both parents in the workforce, child care has become increasingly hard to find.

Childcare costs have steadily increased in the last 25 years, making it harder for parents to find affordable child care when children are young, and/or after-school care when school is not in session. Even with affordable care, parents must be able to handle the occasional call from their childcare provider telling them that their child is too sick to stay in school or needs to see a physician.

Without workplace flexibility and a supportive work environments, it can be difficult for parents to handle these unexpected childcare needs, especially since almost one-quarter of adults report that they have lost a job, or were threatened with job loss, for an absence due to illness or having to care for a sick child or relative.

This problem is even more acute for low-wage workers, who are the least likely to have workplace flexibility options and can least afford to take unpaid leave. Moreover, low-wage workers often face unpredictable schedules with little advance warning, making it challenging to schedule even routine well-child doctor visits or teacher meetings.

Fact 6: Caregiving doesn’t end when the children are grown: eldercare is a fast-growing responsibility of workers.

People who need care besides children include the elderly and those with disabilities, such as grown disabled children, spouses, siblings, and returning veterans. Most people care for someone other than themselves or a child during their lifetime.

Approximately 40 million Americans (16% of the population age 15 and older) provide unpaid care to an elderly relative or family member each year. Men and women are almost equally likely to provide elder care (15% and 17% respectively), although women spend slightly more (3.5) hours per week providing elder care than men (2.9).

When providing elder care, caregivers engage in a variety of activities, from providing physical and medical care to helping with housework, socializing, and communicating. Sixty-three percent of people providing unpaid elder care have jobs, with about half working full-time; one out of five elder care providers are also caring for young children.

Parents who provide elder care have even higher rates of employment: 78% are employed, 62% work full-time. These members of the “sandwich generation” are caring for elderly relatives and young children who face special challenges in balancing work and family. The percentage of households with both children under 18 and adults over the age of 64 has been rising for the past 30 years. In addition, workers are also caring for relatives living outside the household—and non-household members account for the vast majority (85%) of all unpaid elder care.

Fact 7: Men and women alike face challenges as they try to balance work and family.

Men and women are increasingly pressed for time, and as a result struggle to meet their work and family responsibilities. Fathers’ desires to be active caregivers and to share parenting with their partners has likely contributed to the unprecedented level of reported conflict between work and family among men.

In 2008, 60% of fathers in dual-earner couples reported work-family conflict, up from 35% in 1977 (a 71% increase in just one generation). This proportion surpassed the number of mothers in dual-earner couples reporting work-family conflict.

Fact 8: Many workplaces have not kept up with the needs of 21st-century workers and families.

Workers struggling to balance their work and family obligations are increasingly choosing to work for employers that offer flexibility in the workplace. Workers (in some cases) are leaving jobs that don’t offer the flexibility or time off they need to address their family responsibilities. Overall, a third of workers have passed up a job opportunity because it conflicted with family obligations, including 49% of working parents with kids under 18.

Similarly, research finds that women are increasingly choosing career paths with job flexibility over the year, week, and day such as dentistry, veterinary medicine, optometry, and pharmacy.

Fact 9: Providing workplace flexibility and paid leave strengthens families, businesses, and our economy.

A 2011 Gallup Poll finds that having access to flexible work arrangements was highly correlated with greater worker engagement and higher well-being. Policies that increase workplace flexibility—such as job-sharing, phased retirement of older workers, flexible hours, and telecommuting—allow workers to continue making productive contributions to the workforce while also attending to family and other responsibilities.

In announcing the plans for enacting family-friendly workplace policies, President Obama reiterated, “These are necessary steps as the demographics of our workforce change. Our workplaces must change to support working families, boost businesses’ bottom lines, and ensure America’s global economic competitiveness in the coming decades.

“I will build on this progress by signing a Presidential Memorandum to help families better balance work and spending necessary time at home, and set an agenda for a 21st-century workplace. I will continue to work with Congress, and make progress on my own, because working families can no longer wait for Washington to move forward.”