Working women: Key facts and trends in U.S. female labor force participation
Female participation in labor markets grew remarkably in the 20th century but slowed down in the 21st century.
The 20th century saw a radical increase in the number of women participating in labor markets across early-industrialized countries. The following visualization shows this. It plots long-run female participation rates, piecing together OECD data and available historical estimates for the United States.
As we can see, the substantial and sustained increases in the labor force participation of women in the U.S. remains a striking feature of economic and social change in the 20th century.
However, the US — growth in participation slowed down considerably or even stopped at the turn of the 21st century.
Married women drove the increase in female labor force participation.
Most of the long-run increase in the participation of women in labor markets throughout the last century is attributable specifically to an increase in the participation of married women.
The following visualization shows the experience of the US. It plots female labor force participation rates, differentiating by marital status. As can be seen, the marked upward trend observed for the general female population is mainly driven by the trend among married women.
Women in United States remain high labor participation in the last decades.
The following visualization compares female labor force participation rates in the U.S. with the world. We can find that women in the United States remain high participation in the last decades.
Men tend to participate in labor markets more frequently than women.
Men still tend to participate in labor markets more frequently than women. The following visualization shows this. It plots the female-to-male ratio in labor force participation rates (expressed in percentages). These figures correspond to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO). These are ‘modeled estimates’ in the sense that the ILO produces them after harmonizing various data sources to improve comparability across countries.
As we can see, the numbers tend to be well below 100%, which means the participation for women tends to be lower than participation for men.
Women tend to be disproportionately concentrated in certain types of jobs.
The following chart plots the share of women in different economic sectors.
As we can see, there is ‘occupational segregation’: Women tend to be disproportionately concentrated in certain types of jobs. This also has important consequences for pay differences between men and women.
Women spend substantially more time than men on unpaid care work.
Unpaid care work at home is an important activity in which women tend to spend a significant amount of time — and, it is an activity that is typically unaccounted for in labor supply statistics.
The chart shows the female-to-male ratio of time devoted to unpaid services provided within the household, including care of persons, housework and voluntary community work.
As we can see, women spend more time than men on these activities.
Reference:
Comparable historical estimates showing a breakdown of participation rates by age groups show that this increase took place across almost all individual age groups (see, for example, Heckman J. and Killingsworth M. (1986) Female Labor Supply: A Survey. in Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume I, Edited by O. Ashenfelter and R. Layard)