Women in the Workforce Are Changing America
By Derek Thompson
Women earn eighty cents to the dollar compared to men within occupations, according Bureau of Labor Statistics' Women at Work report. But in some industries like food preparation, table service, stock clerks and bill collectors, they out-earn their male counterparts. Here's the authoritative chart from the BLS:
Women earn eighty cents to the dollar compared to men within occupations, according Bureau of Labor Statistics' Women at Work report. But in some industries like food preparation, table service, stock clerks and bill collectors, they out-earn their male counterparts. Here's the authoritative chart from the BLS:
... what more, the educational attainment of the female workforce has dramatically increased. In 1970, when women accounted for less than a third of employment, one out of three women entered the labor force with less than a high school diploma. Today, only one of out fifteen women in the civilian labor force have less than a high school education, and two thirds have at least some college experience.
It's fair to say that the emergence of the educated female worker is one of the great accomplishments of the last half of the 20th century. In 1970, women accounted for 36 percent of college graduates. Today they account for the majority.
This is an unalloyed positive, but it comes with disruptive socioeconomic consequences. College educated women tend to marry later, have fewer children, and are less likely to view marriage as "financial security," according to a 2010 Wharton study [PDF]. Dual earner households find it harder to move when one partner loses a job because moving first requires both partners to find new jobs. The upshot: Families are getting smaller, first-time parents are getting older, and domestic migration is meeting new challenges.
Hand-wringing demographers often ask questions like, Why are 20somethings holding off on financial independence, and why are middle class families getting smaller, and why are parents getting older, and why aren't we seeing a more fluid workforce? These are complicated questions with complicated answers. But the graphs above begin to tell a compelling story. You can't explain delayed marriages and older mothers without talking about women and college.