Women hold more jobs than men for third time in US history and the surprising shift could be here to stay

Who runs the world? Women currently hold more jobs than men in the US for the third time in history — and experts say the disparity could be here to stay as seismic employment shifts take hold in America.The fairer sex held 79.64 million jobs as of June 2026, compared to the 79.34 million jobs held by men at the time — a difference of about 304,000, according to a fascinating survey conducted by the Indeed Hiring Lab.That disparity has been growing sharply in recent months — in Feb.2026, women held 96,000 more jobs than men, meaning the disparity grew by a whopping 208,000 jobs across four months this year alone.And in the last 12 months, about 95% added positions went to women, as did two-thirds — 814,000 — of the 1.2 million added from Feb.

2024 to Feb.2026, according to Indeed.The percentages of men in the labor market have also dipped, with just 66.8% of men employed or actively seeking a job — down from 75.1% in 2000.

Women in the labor market hit 56.6% as of June, but dropped from just 60.1% since 2000.“This gap in male-female labor force participations rates [has] steadily declined over time,” said Indeed Director of Economic Research Laura Ullrich, who wrote the study.“As more women have worked, less men have worked.”It’s a titanic shift from historical trends in the US, where just 60 years ago there were 24 million more men in the workforce than women.

That number has been declining steadily since, but by the 1990s, men still held about 7 million more jobs than women and even by 2005, they held around 5 million more.Women held more jobs than men just two times before, the first after 2008 when male-dominated workplaces were gutted by the Great Recession until historical norms returned.The second came before the 2020 pandemic but was inverted again when lockdowns hit working women harder than men.The current apparent trend led Ullrich to predict it could be here to stay.“I think we’ve just returned back to what it would have b...