Women Outnumber Men in the U.S. Workforce, for Only the Second Time in History

For just the second time in history, females outnumbered males as the majority of the U.S. paid workforce in December, buoyed by rapid job growth in health care and education over the last year as well as the ongoing tight-labor market, the Philadelphia Inquirer . The shift is tiny and easy to miss at initial glance. Women worked 50.04 percent of payroll jobs last month, up from 49.99 percent a month earlier. The figure, though, reflects a larger and ongoing trend. Of the 145,000 jobs picked up in December across the American economy, females won approximately 139,000 of them, according to Labor Department data. Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, calls the latest numbers "a milestone because it's really heralding the future and not just telling us where we are today." Economists note that this narrowing in the gender gap comes as women have been getting college degrees in larger numbers than males.