Women accounted for a dominant share of job growth in August, representing approximately 98% of all positions added during the month.
According to a CNBC analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, women gained 158,000 of the 162,000 total jobs added in August, leaving men with just 4,000 net positions.
That disparity means men contributed to overall payroll growth at a rate nearly 40 times smaller than their female counterparts during the month.
The Economic Security Project, a progressive nonprofit, was first to flag the striking gender breakdown in Friday’s employment data.
The gap between the number of jobs held by women compared with men climbed to levels never before seen, according to Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
“We are in the midst of a shift,” Ullrich said. “It is changing right before our eyes.”
Over the past 12 months, the level of employed women has grown by more than 870,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, while men have lost nearly 1.5 million employed workers over the same period.
Healthcare, considered the engine of labor market growth for more than a year, continued adding positions in August, with upwards of four out of every five workers in the industry being women.
The local government and education sector accounted for 42,000 jobs in August, roughly a fourth of the total net gain, a sector where women hold close to three-quarters of positions related to education, training, and libraries.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for women fell to 3.9% in August, down 0.4 percentage points from a year prior, while the male rate climbed to 4.4%.
The overall nonfarm payrolls figure of 162,000 blew past economist expectations, representing more than triple what forecasters had predicted for the month.
Heather Long, Navy Federal Credit Union’s chief economist, cautioned that month-to-month data by gender can be volatile, urging analysts to focus instead on longer-term trends tied to gender.
Long said those longer-term trends point to a “mom-cession,” a term used to describe the phenomenon of mothers of young children leaving the workforce entirely.
Because women tend to earn less than men, Ullrich warned that a higher female share of job gains could signal companies are concentrating hiring in lower-wage roles rather than reflecting genuine workforce advancement.
“You could look at it and say, ‘Yay, women,'” Ullrich said, but added, “I don’t think it’s necessarily a positive story for women overall.”
