A Shortage of Women

COVID-19 changed the workforce: women left, but are they returning?

The latest data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows there are 8.1 million job openings in the United States and 6.6 million unemployed workers. Yikes! The numbers are almost too high to comprehend. A shortage of workers creates economic upheaval for many industries—something we can’t afford. As workers and employers, we continue to grapple with finding an answer we can all embrace. It appears the solution lies in aligning the right worker with the right career, but this begs the question, again, are we making the right moves to achieve this?

Since the onset of the pandemic, we have seen a declining labor force participation rate, and neither men’s nor women’s participation has fully rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Too many workers are being left behind. One example is women in the workforce. Let’s unpack some numbers that we still don’t talk enough about to see which direction we are trending. But, first, to better understand today’s numbers, let’s go back to when women first started entering the workforce: the 1920s.

The Brookings Institute paints a beautiful picture of women in the labor force from a historical perspective, saying in that era, just 20% of all women were “gainful workers.” At that time in history, the Census Bureau categorized labor force participation outside the home. Only 5% of those who were married were categorized this way.

While single women were working more in the 1920s and married women were staying home, women’s participation in the economy continued to rise, between the 1930s and mid-1970s. Here is when we began to see an increase in married women heading to the workforce as well. By 1970, 50% of single women and 40% of married women were participating in the labor force.

This trend just continued upward for the next several decades. By the early 1990s, the labor force participation rate of prime working-age women—those between the ages of 25 and 54—rose. Women were going to work in droves.

Flash forward to just before the pandemic in February 2020. At that point in history, we see 59% of women over the age of 20 were participating in the labor force, compared to 71.4% of men. The numbers still weren’t great, but progress had been made. Let’s not forget, we still have the freedom to choose if we wanted to be in the labor mix.

Then the pandemic hit, and we saw both men and women suffer a 3% drop in labor force participation. But more than two years later, men have returned to work at a higher rate than women. Yikes, and yikes again!

The fact that labor force participation still lags for women has resulted in roughly 617,000 women missing from today’s labor force if the participation rate matched what it was in February 2020.

Why? Perhaps we need to dig a little deeper into some of the biggest factors.

Women stay home to care for children. In 1989, 86% of mothers cited home and family care as the leading reason for exiting the workforce, while 79% reported the same reason in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed this even further.

Views on work-life balance are shifting. In a 2021 survey, 45% of workers reported leaving the workforce because they lacked flexibility in the workplace. To be candid, men’s views on work-life balance are shifting as well.

Women are paid less than men. Women in the United States earn 16 cents per dollar less than men. This ‘salary gap’ can contribute to the decision for a working mother to stay home with their child rather than pay for childcare.

I go into this topic of women and work in a bit more detail in this month’s podcast, looking at the glass ceiling and the broken rung. I share the data, but I also share stories.

I give an example of being berated by a man in business and lessons learned. I explain how women can create a fulfilling career—and have that work-life balance. It is possible to care for children and have a career. We just must get creative sometimes.

The number of women participating in the labor force today stands at 79 million. While this is above the pre-pandemic number by nearly 2 million, the overall share of women participating in the labor force is still lagging compared to pre-pandemic levels. The numbers tell the story. It seems we are trending in the wrong direction for women at work. We can always do better no matter where we work.