JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
For decades, one of the most reliable trends in the American economy has been the growing number of women working, but lately, government data shows women's participation in the labor force has been falling. Some of the jobs where women are concentrated, including education and government jobs, have been hit by cuts. And for working parents, childcare remains extraordinarily expensive, while some employers are scaling back the flexibility that became common during the pandemic. So what does all of this mean for women and work in America? And are we looking at a short-term dip or something bigger? Betsy Stevenson is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. She studies work, families and gender. Betsy, welcome.
BETSY STEVENSON: It's great to speak with you.
SUMMERS: Great to talk with you, too. OK, I want to start just big picture here. When you look at what's happening with women's participation in the workforce right now, what stands out most?
STEVENSON: I think there's really a glass half full, glass half empty story that we could tell right now because we definitely see a downward dip happening, but it's coming off of the highest labor force participation rate for prime age women, and that prime age is something economists use to refer to people who are between the ages of 25 and 54. So I don't want to put too much pressure on the downward trend and say this is really important because, historically, we're still seeing high rates of labor force participation.
SUMMERS: I have been following this topic closely, and I couldn't help but see all over my social media, there was a lot of attention on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The National Women's Law Center says it showed women accounted for essentially all of the recent decline in labor force participation. How much should we read into that analysis?
STEVENSON: I think we want to be really careful about looking at any kind of month-to-month trends, particularly when it comes to labor force participation. The survey is quite noisy. It's not that many people. And so when I look at the longer-term trends, I still saw really optimistic growth in women's labor force participation overall in 2025. And the declines we're seeing right now, you know, some of it is that women, when they can't find work, seem to be leaving the labor force, which just tells us they have something else to be doing rather than being unemployed. Whereas, what we're seeing for men is that they are experiencing that time period as an unemployed person.
You know, I don't like to see women leave the labor force, but I also want us to be careful about over interpreting those movements in our modern times because people move from out of the labor force back into employment quite a bit.
SUMMERS: One thing that I think about a lot when we think about these issues is during the pandemic, so many employers, including ours, learned that people could work remotely or with more flexible schedules. And now we're seeing many companies bringing workers back into the physical office, the workplace. How important is that shift when we think about this for women - particularly when I think about women who have children or perhaps even other caregiving responsibilities for a loved one?
STEVENSON: This is definitely going to impact women more than men because women have, even prior to the pandemic, been more likely to seek out flexible work arrangements. Because those flexible work arrangements, as you said, allow them to balance their work with their family caregiving needs in a way that helps keep costs down and also keeps costs like commuting costs down, so they're not spending as much time on the road, and they can do more for their employer, more for their family.
I think what we saw, in particular, was, as we saw an explosion in work from home, that really helped push college-educated women with younger kids into the labor force. Although, I should actually clarify, it's more that it keeps them in. When you're able to work remotely, not even every single day but a few days a week, it removes some of the burdens and stresses and allows women to keep working, even as they face challenges with childcare, challenges with their family's needs. It gives that little bit of buffer, and so we see fewer exits of women with young kids.
SUMMERS: I also, Betsy, want to talk about the demand side of this. We have women potentially leaving the workforce at the same time that some female-dominated industries are losing jobs. So how do we distinguish between women who are choosing to work less and women who are having fewer opportunities to work?
STEVENSON: You know, these things go hand in hand. You know, supply and demand come together. It's kind of like asking whether it's the top blade or the bottom blade of a pair of scissors that cuts the paper. You need them both to be working. So why do women choose to step out? Well, they might choose to step out 'cause the opportunities aren't good enough to keep them there.
And I think whether women are choosing or whether they've been pushed out because they were working in government and lost their job, I think what we're seeing is a situation in which we do not have a robust enough job creation environment. We do not have a robust enough set of labor market opportunities to have as many women make the choice to work as were making that choice a year ago.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Betsy Stevenson, economist at the University of Michigan. Betsy, thanks.
STEVENSON: It was great talking with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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