2025-10-27
5 分钟The Economist.
Hello, Mike Bird here, co-host of Money Talks,
our weekly podcast on markets, the economy and business.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an article from the latest edition of The Economist, which we very much hope you'll enjoy.
For almost 80 years, since America's Bureau of Labour Statistics began splitting data by gender,
at least one story has been true: women have been gaining on men.
In 1948 just 32% of women were employed or seeking work, against 87% of their male peers.
By the end of the 1990s, some 60% of women were in the workforce, alongside 75% of men.
During the 2000s and 2010s, the gap continued to shrink, albeit because male employment was falling.
Then the covid-19 pandemic pushed workers out—but women recovered faster,
narrowing the gap between the sexes to just 10.1 percentage points by early 2025, the smallest on record.
Now something has changed.
Although men's participation is steady, women are leaving the workforce.
From a post-covid high of 57.7% in August 2024, their participation rate has fallen by almost a full percentage point,
to 56.9%—implying over 600,000 women have absconded.
Labour-force data can jump about, and there is lots to explain volatility at present,
from federal firings to a sharp fall in immigration.
Still, the male-female participation gap has seen its biggest rise since the 1950s.
What might lie behind the trend?