The Recession Derailed the Decade of the Single Woman

As the denizens of newsrooms attempt to name this departing era and assign it a theme song, Beyonce’s wagging finger will surely come to mind. This is the decade of “All the Single Ladies [2],” beckoned in by an uptown pixie in a pair of Blahniks, at first viewed through glasses tinted rosy as a $15 cosmo. But while this moment’s montage may commence with Carrie in her curbside tutu, its finale should cast the women of Adrian LeBlanc’s study of struggling single motherhood, Random Family [3]. This decade needs to end with a very different discussion of single life than the one with which it began.

In our frothier days, it seemed a single woman’s main concern was her dating life, not her survival. And yet, while the early aughts were aflutter with media “investigating” whether unmarried women truly were more fabulous, there’s no parity whatsoever in examining if these days they’re destitute. But new numbers, crunched by the Center for American Progress last month [4], point to a dire and neglected story: Single women are suffering greater economic peril than married ones. Over the past year, the number of unemployed, unmarried females rose 3.6 percent, while married women saw only a 1.7 percent increase. For single mothers with a 4.1 percent increase, it’s even worse: Their jobless rates have jumped to 2.4 percent above the national average. And with such rising numbers, it’s hard to be optimistic about recovery any time soon. Our economic downfall may be rendering singlehood a different social class for many ... (Read the rest of this article [5] at The Big Money [6].)