Physical, psychological, and economic abuse often lead to job instability. 3/5

 A 2005 national telephone poll of 1,200 working adults found that 64 percent of those who identified as victims of domestic violence reported that their ability to work was affected by the violence.11 Constant distraction and fear of abuser’s intrusions at work make it difficult for victims to concentrate and perform their job duties.12 Nearly all (96 percent) of 120 employed women IPV survivors surveyed by the Maine Department of Labor indicated that abuse affected their performance and productivity, including being constantly harassed at work, delayed getting to work, or prevented from going to work (Figure 1). As a result, 60 percent of victims in the study reported having either quit their job or being terminated as a result of the abuse.13

Analysis of NVAWS data found that victims of IPV who were stalked lost an average of 10.1 days of paid work per year, those who were raped lost an average of 8.1 days per year, and those who experienced physical violence lost 7.2 days per year.14 Another study analyzing the obstacles impacting the number of hours worked by welfare recipients in Michigan found that experiencing IPV was associated with significantly fewer hours worked per year—victims reported working more than 10 percent fewer hours annually than nonabused women.15

Reduced work hours and lower educational attainment lead to significant income losses for those experiencing IPV. Interviews of female participants in Pennsylvania’s Work First Program in 1998 and 2001 found that women who reported increased abuse when they started their job worked fewer weeks and had lower wages. Women who experienced work-related control, abuse, and sabotage faced an 88 cent per hour “wage penalty” compared with those who had not.16 When comparing wages in the 2000 NYS, authors found that adolescents who experienced physical or sexual assault earned more than one dollar less per hour than their peers; between 50 and 71 percent of these effects can be attributed to lower educational attainment and occupational status as a result of experiencing violence.17 Expected lifetime income losses for adolescent victims of sexual violence was $36,000 in 2000 dollars, in 2017 this would equate to $52,242.18

https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/B367_Economic-Impacts-of-IPV-08.14.17.pdf