Mixed Signals on Job Gains for Women

One of the bigger economic puzzles of 2025 is what is going on with women in the labor market. The monthly Employment Situation report uses two separate surveys—one for households and one for business establishments—to track the labor market. Both surveys show a softer labor market than last year overall, but they don’t give a uniform picture on women. 

The household survey tells us women are less likely to be employed than last year, with the employment ratio falling from 57 percent to 56.1 percent while the figure for men is roughly unchanged. The establishment data shows average job gains over the last six months of around 64,000 a month (that figure was 134,000 a year ago), with very narrow job growth across industries over the summer. What stands out is that education and health services, a field where three-quarters of workers are women, have added twice as many jobs as the overall economy this summer, even as the other sectors of the economy have lost net jobs. Going back six months, this field has added about as many jobs as the economy overall. 

If all job growth is coming from an industry that’s 75 percent women, how can women be losing ground in the labor market? There are some technical reasons that make the surveys not perfectly comparable, but not enough to explain this large of a gap. If this pattern continues this month, the labor market may be even weaker than it appears. The divergence could signal future downward revisions to the sector keeping job growth positive this quarter, as well as a weaker economy overall. Of course, all of these questions remain even more difficult to answer if the government shuts down and we don’t get a Friday jobs report, as appears increasingly likely as this blog publishes.