Women now hold more payroll jobs than men in the United States for only the third time in the country’s history, marking a shift in the labour market that economists say may prove longer-lasting than previous reversals.
The milestone has emerged without a recession, unlike the two earlier occasions when women briefly outnumbered men in paid employment: during the Great Recession around 2010 and in the period immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that employers added 162,000 non-farm jobs in August, taking the unemployment rate to 4.1 per cent. Food services, drinking places and local-government education were among the sectors recording gains. ([bls.gov](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm))
Women accounted for 158,000 of the 162,000 jobs created that month, while men represented only a small share of the increase. Over the previous year, the number of employed women rose by more than 870,000, while employment among men fell by nearly 1.5 million.
The trend has been driven in part by continued recruitment in sectors where women are heavily represented, including healthcare, education and hospitality. The contrast with male employment has sharpened since the pandemic, when jobs in industries such as construction and manufacturing failed to recover as strongly.
Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at Indeed’s Hiring Lab and a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, has described the change as potentially structural rather than a temporary consequence of the economic cycle.
Indeed’s latest analysis found that the US labour force had shrunk by about 700,000 people during 2026, with changing participation rates between men and women among the forces reshaping the workforce. The organisation said the contraction would be only the second decline in the labour force outside a recession since 1948. ([hiringlab.indeed.com](https://hiringlab.indeed.com/2026/09/10/interpreting-the-labor-market-in-a-new-era-of-constrained-labor-supply/))
Men aged 20 and over had a labour-force participation rate of 69.4 per cent in August, down from 75.8 per cent in the same month in 2006. The number of employed men is also around seven million lower than it was in the 1990s.
Economists have offered competing explanations for the decline, ranging from the growth of alternative forms of leisure to a loss of confidence among young men entering a labour market marked by weak wage growth and limited opportunities. Whatever the cause, the movement away from work appears to have persisted across several economic conditions.
Women have more jobs but lower pay
The rise in the number of jobs held by women has not translated into equality in earnings. Women continue to earn about 81 cents for every dollar earned by men, with the gap generally widening as workers get older.
Data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers show that women graduating with bachelor’s degrees in 2023 received an average starting salary of $59,778, compared with $72,190 for men. That left female graduates earning roughly 83 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts at the beginning of their careers. ([naceweb.org](https://www.naceweb.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/2024/publication/free-report/nace-first-destinations-for-the-class-of-2023.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=a3e347d6_3))
The figures also point to a division in the types of work men and women enter. Women are more likely to work in education, nursing and care occupations, while they remain under-represented in better-paid areas including finance, construction, science and engineering.
Women make up roughly two-thirds of workers in low-paid jobs. They outnumber men in teaching by about three to one and in nursing by eight to one, while accounting for less than a third of the science and engineering workforce.
Parenthood is another major factor. Research by Nobel prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin found that pay differences early in a career are relatively modest but widen sharply after women have children. Mothers are more likely to reduce their hours or take time away from paid employment, while fathers generally experience less disruption to their careers.
Return-to-office requirements introduced after the pandemic have added to the pressure on women who carry most childcare responsibilities, potentially limiting access to promotion and higher-paid roles.
Over a typical 40-year career, women are estimated to earn $542,800 less than men. The cumulative shortfall is greater for women of colour, whose losses can exceed $1 million over the same period.
The latest jobs figures therefore present a mixed picture. Women are becoming the majority of the US workforce by headcount, but the occupations driving that increase tend to offer lower pay, while the underlying causes of the gender earnings gap remain firmly in place.
