When Mónica Hernández told her husband that her 2019 New Year’s resolution was to go back to work, he was surprised. He kept asking her if that’s what she really wanted to do. She had been out of the workforce for a year after a difficult pregnancy and the birth of their first child.“I want to put my brain to use,” Hernández told her husband. “Now my son is here, and it makes me want to do even more.”
Hernández, 28, landed a job this spring as a part-time receptionist at Impressions Pediatric Therapy in Maryland, making her part of a surge of Hispanic and African American women who are entering the workforce amid one of the hottest labor markets in U.S. history.