American women are leading the post-pandemic US jobs recovery
The percentage of American women in their prime working years employed or looking for work reached an all-time-high in May, while prime-age men are not yet participating in the labor force at their pre-pandemic levels, according to new data from the US Labor Department.Read more……
A dramatic difference in trends for women and men
The post-pandemic trend is an acceleration of women entering the workforce very quickly since the 1960s.
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“It’s been basically a doubling over a half century of the share of women who are working,” said Kathryn Edwards, a labor economist at the Rand Corp, in a Twitter spaces. “For men, it’s the opposite story. There’s no peak for them to recover, because their labor force participation has been declining almost as long as we’ve been keeping track of the data.”
The exciting part of this data is that the US has a great deal of policy opportunities that could put more women into the workforce and improve the labor supply, Edwards added.
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But the gains for women are not without headwinds. With abortion restrictions passing in states around the country after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, expensive childcare, domestic abuse, and the career penalties of pregnancy itself may keep more women from working.
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