Nearly 850,000 Women Have Left the US Workforce Since January, More Than Double the Number of Men

Nearly 850,000 women have left the US labour force since January, the start of a year-to-date comparison used in both the federal data and the National Women's Law Center's analysis, more than double the 406,000 men who exited the workforce over the same period, according to a new analysis from the National Women's Law Center.

The gap widened further in July alone. Women accounted for the entire net decline in the US labour force that month, with 165,000 women aged 20 and over leaving work or stopping their search for it, while men's participation stayed unchanged.

Women Bore All of July's Job Losses

The US economy lost 23,000 jobs overall in July. Women lost 32,000 of those roles.

Men, by contrast, gained 9,000 jobs in the same month, according to the NWLC's reading of the data. Women currently make up 50.1 percent of the American workforce.

'This is not a sign of a healthy economy, no matter what the administration continues to insist,' said Jasmine Tucker, vice president of research at NWLC. 'Instead, it's a sign that too many women are being pushed to the sidelines.'

Federal Data Backs the Trend

The NWLC's figures are drawn from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly Employment Situation report, and the federal data confirms the broader slide. The BLS report shows the labour force participation rate has dropped 0.7 percentage points since January, with the employment-population ratio down 0.5 points over the same stretch.

The participation rate now sits at 61.4 percent, its lowest point since February 2021. That slide caught markets off guard. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were actually expecting the release to show 83,000 added roles, more than June's 57,000.

Longer Job Searches for Women of Colour

The NWLC analysis also points to a widening gap in how long unemployed women have been searching for work. Nearly one in four unemployed women aged 16 and over had been job-hunting for six months or longer.

That figure climbs sharply for some groups. Over a third of unemployed Asian women, and more than a quarter of unemployed Latinas, fell into that long-term jobless category.

Leisure and Hospitality Hit Hardest

One sector stands out in the data. Leisure and hospitality, where women make up 52.3 percent of the workforce, lost 40,000 jobs in July.

Women accounted for 63,000 of those losses, while men in the same sector actually gained 23,000 jobs, according to the NWLC's breakdown of the BLS figures.

The scale of the gap, 845,000 women against 406,000 men leaving the workforce since January, means the story is no longer confined to a single volatile month. It points to a pattern building across the first seven months of the year.

For women already juggling caregiving responsibilities or working in sectors like hospitality that shed jobs disproportionately, the practical effect is fewer income options and a longer road back into steady employment once conditions improve. Tucker herself pointed to a second, less visible layer to the problem. 'Many who remain employed are underemployed,' she said, meaning the women still counted as part of the workforce are not necessarily in the position they want to be in either.

That distinction matters for how the numbers get read going forward. A recovery in the participation rate alone would not tell the full story, since it would not capture whether the jobs women return to match their skills, hours, or pay expectations.