How Labor Force Participation Has Diverged Across Genders

Greeshma Avaradi, Andreas Hornstein, Taerin Kim and Marianna Kudlyak

FRBSF Economic Letter, 2026, vol. 2026, issue 15, 6

Abstract: U.S. labor force participation rose for decades until the mid-1990s but has fallen steadily since then. This general pattern masks different paths for men and women in the workforce. Aging and rising education explain much of the long-run changes but do not account for the divergence by gender. Men’s trend participation has fallen steadily since the late 1970s, while women’s participation rose through 2000 before flattening. The difference mainly reflects younger male cohorts participating less than earlier ones, whereas younger female cohorts—especially those with more education—have higher participation.

Keywords: Labor Force Participation; gender; women; Women; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/el2026-15.pdf PDF - view (application/pdf)
https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/public ... erged-across-genders FRBSF - view (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedfel:103347

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in FRBSF Economic Letter from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().