More women than men with bachelor’s degree in labour force
For decades there have been more women than men with a bachelor’s degree and now finally, women have overtaken men and account for 50.7% of the college-educated labour force in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. This shift in the college-educated labour force – as women now comprise a majority – comes around four decades after women surpassed in the number of Americans earning a bachelor’s degree each year.
The change occurred in the fourth quarter 2019 and remains the case today, even though the pandemic resulted in a sharp recession and an overall decline in the size of the labour force.
“Today, there are more women ages 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or more education in the labour force than before the pandemic: 31.3 million in the second quarter of 2022, compared with 29.1 million in the same quarter of 2019.”
“The number of college-educated men ages 25 and older in the labor force is also greater than before the pandemic – 30.5 million, up from 29.1 million – though their ranks have not increased as quickly as those of women.”
The analysis says the pandemic disproportionately impacted labour market activity for adults without a bachelor’s degree, especially among women. The number of women with some college or less education in the labour force has declined 4.6% since the second quarter of 2019, compared with a smaller change among men with some college or less education (-1.3%).
“The upshot of these disparate changes in the labour force by gender and education is that women have increased their representation in the college-educated labour force since 2019. At the same time, there has not been much change in the gender composition of the labour force that has some college or less education.”
The number of women and men in the US with at least a bachelor’s degree has increased since the second quarter of 2019. But the share of college-educated women who are in the labour force has not changed since before the pandemic, while the share of college-educated men who are working or looking for work has declined.
In the second quarter of 2022, the labour force participation rate for college-educated women was 69.6%, the same as in the second quarter of 2019. In contrast, men and most other educational groups now have lower rates of labour force participation than they did in the second quarter of 2019.
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