Job continuity among new mothers

In the early 1990s, both state and federal governments enacted maternity-le ave legislation. The key provision of that legislation is that after a leav e of a limited duration, the recent mother is guaranteed the right to retur n to her preleave employer at the same or equivalent position. Using data f rom the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we correlate work status aft er childbirth with work status before pregnancy to estimate the prevalence, before the legislation, of returns to the preleave employer. Among women w orking full-time before the pregnancy, return to the prepregnancy employer was quite common. Sixty percent of women who worked full-time before the bi rth of a child continued to work for the same employer after the child was born. Furthermore, the labor market behavior of most of the remaining 40% s uggests that maternity-leave legislation is unlikely to have a major effect on job continuity Compared with all demographically similar women, however ; new mothers have an excess probability of leaving their jobs.