Women Now Hold Most U.S. Payroll Jobs as Men Exit the Workforce

Women now control a majority of U.S. nonfarm payroll jobs for only the third time in American history, even though they continue to earn less than men across virtually every sector and experience tier. The shift has emerged during an expanding economy rather than a severe cyclical downturn.

Over the 12-month period ending in late summer, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the U.S. economy added more than 870,000 female workers while men lost nearly 1.5 million positions. In August alone, employers created 162,000 nonfarm payroll jobs: women secured 158,000 of them, while men accounted for roughly 2% of the gains.

The current labor market has been shaped by persistent hiring demand in service, health, and civic infrastructure sectors. Health care, social assistance, education, and hospitality have led employment creation, and female employment is heavily concentrated in those industries. Women outnumber men by 3 to 1 in education, while the ratio reaches 8 to 1 in registered nursing and related caregiving fields.

Men remain heavily overrepresented in construction, extraction, transport, and financial services. Women, by contrast, make up less than one-third of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Approximately 7 million fewer men are employed today than in the 1990s.

For men aged 20 and older, the labor force participation rate has fallen to 69.4%, down from 75.8% in August 2006. In the mid-20th century, prime-age male participation routinely exceeded 95%, supported by a robust domestic manufacturing sector. Deindustrialization, automation, and shifting job market demands have since steadily lowered male participation.

Research by University of Connecticut economists Remy Levin and Daniela Vidart links part of the recent acceleration to the conditions young men face when they enter the labor force. Those who begin working during periods of elevated unemployment or weak wage growth frequently develop pessimistic expectations regarding career progression, leading a growing segment to leave the labor market entirely. Other researchers have cited behavioral shifts and altered leisure preferences among young men.

Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab and former senior regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said the current dynamic represents a permanent or semi-permanent realignment of U.S. workforce demographics rather than a temporary fluctuation tied to a business cycle.

Women have crossed the majority threshold on U.S. payrolls only twice before. The first instance came in late 2009 and early 2010, after the 2007–2009 Great Recession. Steep job losses in construction, heavy manufacturing, and freight transport disproportionately affected male employment. The second occurred briefly in late 2019 and early 2020, immediately before the economic shutdowns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, women’s majority ended as male-dominated industries recovered.

The pay gap is already visible when workers enter the college-educated labor force. A National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) study of entry-level outcomes for the college graduating class of 2023 found that women with bachelor’s degrees received average starting salaries of $59,778. Male graduates with the same level of degree recorded an average starting salary of $72,190. At the outset of their careers, female graduates therefore earned approximately 83 cents for every dollar earned by male counterparts.

That entry-level difference reflects initial occupational sorting as well as continuing salary differentials within shared fields. Women account for approximately two-thirds of all low-wage workers in the United States, concentrating female employment in positions with limited upward earnings mobility.

Across all full-time workers, women currently earn an average of 81 cents for every dollar paid to men. When federal wage equity legislation was established through the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women earned approximately 59 cents on the dollar relative to men. The gap narrowed steadily through the 1980s and 1990s, but progress has slowed in recent decades.

Over a standard 40-year career, the current difference translates into an earnings shortfall of $542,800 for a woman compared with a male counterpart. For women of color, the lifetime gap exceeds $1 million because of compound disparities in baseline wages and promotional velocity.

Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin identified one major force behind the widening gap over time: the institutional dynamic known as the motherhood penalty. Goldin, who received the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her comprehensive studies of women’s labor market history, found that compensation differences between men and women remain relatively minor immediately after university graduation.

Her research showed that the pay trajectory diverges sharply following the birth of a worker’s first child. Women’s post-childbirth earnings plateau or decline relative to men in identical professions and with equivalent academic credentials. Corporate structures that heavily reward “greedy work”—positions requiring long, continuous hours and strict on-site availability—are a major factor.

Primary caretaking responsibilities in the U.S. continue to fall disproportionately on women. Female workers are consequently more likely to seek flexible scheduling, take temporary leaves of absence, or reduce working hours. Post-pandemic return-to-office directives from major corporate employers have reinforced those pressures by placing disproportionate strain on working mothers who relied on hybrid arrangements to balance caregiving with full-time employment, further constraining wage growth at mid- and senior-career levels.