Defying all expectations, the percentage of women in the workforce with young children is significantly higher than it’s ever been, says a new report from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.
This could represent a “level shift” for working mothers — with potential lifetime consequences in terms of higher earnings and improved career trajectories.
In June, 70.4% of women with children under 5 were in the workforce — compared to a peak of 68.9% before the pandemic, per the report.
“In labor force participation rate terms, that’s really big,” said Lauren Bauer, a fellow at Brookings, who co-authored the report.
The paper looked at participation rates for all women, those with elementary school-aged kids and those with teens. No other categories have rebounded past their pre-pandemic levels.
The numbers surprised Bauer, who called them “shocking.” Along with many others, she’d worried that the pandemic would push more mothers out of the workforce.
More research needs to be done, but it looks like a big factor is remote work, which enabled more women to stay attached to the workforce.
The women who were highly educated, and more likely to work from home, were among those more likely to be in the workforce now than pre-pandemic.
Plus, as other research has found, the pandemic — and ability to work remotely— may also have led more families to decide to have babies.
Big picture: Advocates for women in the workforce have long argued that more flexibility at work would allow mothers to hang on to their jobs.
It’s easy to understand why — if you’re able to telework, you can handle a call from daycare to come pick up a feverish child, manage a midday doctor appointment, or take someone to a playdate.
If you can’t get that flexibility, you’re more likely to leave a high-demand full-time job to go part-time, or exit the workforce entirely.
