America's female workforce is expanding

As the labor market bounces back from a pandemic slump, America’s female workforce is seeing a strong recovery… but not without consequences for some working women, per the WSJ.

New data released by the Labor Department reveals that the share of women aged 25-54 that are working or looking for work reached an all-time high of 78.1% in May, before falling slightly last month — meaning that women now hold a record 79 million jobs across the US.

While the lasting effects of remote working, as well as economic uncertainty, have meant that more women than ever are in formal employment, women’s median weekly earnings were just 83.6% of men’s last year, per BLS data.

Home truths

Indeed, the widespread normalization of WFH has given mothers of young children in particular, who’ve previously been shut out of in-person jobs due to household responsibilities, more opportunities to rejoin the working world. Last year, nearly 69% of American women with kids under 6 years old were in the labor market, up 2.5% from 2019. And, with inflation, many women are now bringing home the (increasingly expensive) bacon by necessity.

For a lot of women, though, at-home work is stacked on top of existing domestic obligations. A 2023 study from Pew Research Center found that, even in opposite-sex marriages where the earnings of the husband and wife were relatively egalitarian (no more than a 40:60 split in either direction), wives spent on average 4.5 hours more time per week on caregiving & housework than their spouses.