Making Time for Career While Off the Job : Women who leave the work force for family can minimize wage loss when they return by continuing to develop their skills.

A recent report quantified a problem that people had suspected for some time: Women who interrupt careers for family never make as much money as those who stay on the job.

Seven years out of the work force can cost a woman 10 years of wages over the course of her career, according to economics professors Laurence Levin and Joyce Jacobsen.

During a woman’s first year back on the job, she makes an average 33% less than women in comparable positions who never left, researchers found. After three to five years, the wage gap shrunk to 20%; it dropped to 10% after 11 to 20 years. But even two decades later, the women who left jobs earned 7% less.

Jacobsen and Levin’s research tracked 2,426 women who ranged in age from 30 to 64 when the three-year study began in 1983. It compared wages of those who worked continuously since their last year of school to those who had taken at least one break of six months or more.

Results of the study show that industry is not structured to support families. However, recognizing a problem is the first step to solving it, and advice for so-called “gappers” is beginning to appear.

Lost wages, according to the Levin/Jacobsen study, are a result of two things: the perception that a woman is not serious about her career and a gap of time away from work on a resume.

The best thing a mother can do to counter a loss of wages is to attend school while she is home caring for children, according to Jacobsen, an economics professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.

Even one class a semester is enough so that the time spent at home will not appear as a gap in her career. Because the strategy is so effective, Jacobsen said during a recent telephone interview, she and Levin omitted student mothers from their research. They were not being as measurably hurt by the time off from full-time work.

Another option, Jacobsen said, is “to try to at least signal to people that you are serious about having some kind of career.”

“If you leave the work force, that signals to some employers that a woman might not be as good a worker,” Levin wrote in the study. “Or when a woman who had a baby comes back to work, an employer might think she’s got her mind on her baby and her home life instead of her job.”

Ann Coil, who owns a career counseling service in Orange that bears her name, recommends that a woman prepare a well-scripted summary of what she is doing with her time. And it can’t be all about the baby.

“Tell people you’re (taking time) out of your career to have children, versus saying that you’ve resigned your position,” Coil said. “Tell them that you’re planning to do research, that you’ve joined a professional group, and when you plan to re-enter the work force.

“You have to give people the impression that this is an active time, and that you’re going to continue to develop your skills.”

In fact, Coil recommends calling it a sabbatical. Here are some of her other suggestions:

* Develop and keep career contacts. Take them out to lunch every three months or so to keep yourself current with what people in your field are discussing.

* Read professional journals.

* Do some research or develop a specialty in one aspect of your field.

* If you do not have time for classes, attend workshops that will teach you new skills or keep you current in your field.

* Consider part-time work or consulting. Try volunteer work if you need more flexibility; this can be listed on a resume in addition to work for pay.

* Accept speaking engagements.

* Teach a class at an extended education or community service center.

“There’s a raging controversy over whether you can have it all or can’t have it all,” Coil said. “If you’re going to try to have it all, there are some ways to make it work better.”