Just before the pandemic, there was an odd phenomenon that very few people noticed: Most jobs in America were held by women. Pandemic job losses disproportionately fell on women, and so men were once again a majority of job-holders.
But since then, women have reentered the workforce at a faster rate than men, and pretty soon, it will again be true that most jobs in America are held by women. And that will probably be a pretty permanent fact about the labor force.
ECONOMY AGAIN BEATS EXPECTATIONS WITH 263,000 JOBS IN SEPTEMBER, UNEMPLOYMENT FALLS TO 3.5%
59% of the job gains this month went to women
Women now hold 49.86% of all nonfarm payroll jobs
Prime age women’s labor force participation has recovered more than that of men, narrowing the gap in labor force participation rates between them.
— Betsey Stevenson (@BetseyStevenson) October 7, 2022
In September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 76.3 million women were on payrolls, while just under 76.9 million men were. In other words, women make up 49.86% of employed people in America by this measure — and it looks to me like it is rising.
Given that women make up a majority of college graduates these days, 60% of all master’s degrees, and a majority of all doctorates, it seems very plausible that in the next year or two, women could overtake men on this score, and never look back.
(I should note that women also held a majority of non-farm jobs briefly in 2009 when we emerged from the financial crisis.)
What would it mean if women had most of the jobs in the United States?
Most importantly, it seems that we can stop making it a priority to “get women to work!”
More jobs is great! Women having access to jobs is great! But politicians and academics call constantly for subsidized daycare and all sorts of other policies to boost the number of working mothers, which seems like an odd focus given that women are in the workforce as much as men are.
My colleague Conn Carroll wrote about this: “When it comes to family policy, the top priority — the only priority — of the Left is achieving equality. The family, in their view, benefits from policies that force as many mothers into the workforce as quickly as possible.”
Also, it seems like a very pertinent fact for the argument advanced by the Brookings Institution’s Richard Reeves, who has written a book, Of Boys and Men, about the male sex falling behind.
Here are some other stats, as cited by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic:
- “In the U.S. … the 2020 decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than for female students.”
- “Among men with only a high-school education, one in three is out of the labor force. For those who have a job, typical earnings are $881 a week, down from $1,017 in 1979.”
- “Mortality from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related illnesses … are almost three times higher among men than women.”
American politics likes to keep fighting old familiar fights, but it’s not healthy. If you are continuing the fight to get women into the workforce, you’re not fighting for equality at this point. You’re fighting a culture war of some sort.
