The American workforce is a matriarchy

This year, for only the third time in American history, employed women outnumbered employed men. That shift has been beneficial for women, especially — and surprisingly — for mothers of young children. To maintain that momentum, it’s more important than ever to ensure quality childcare is readily available and accessibly priced.

Women with young kids are more likely to be in the workforce than ever before, a shift due in part to the country’s cost-of-living crisis. This phenomenon of having more employed women than men also reflects a gradual shift in the labor market: The industry composition is moving away from traditionally male-dominated blue-collar occupations and more toward healthcare work. Many experts are also pointing to childcare access and telework options as important factors for women’s labor force participation.

But despite what some may suggest, I don’t think telework plays a significant factor in the current labor market story. As a labor economist who spends most of my time crunching numbers about how gender interacts with the labor market, I think the data suggests that women are charging ahead in part thanks to childcare support that became more readily available during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We have to look at this trend in rising female employment through the lens of that time and experience. Mothers were hit hard by the pandemic shutdown, and their participation in the labor force plummeted in the spring of 2020. Many moms didn’t recover until nearly two years later, and their maternal scream still echoed across the media landscape long after the world first ground to a halt. School closures put parents — mostly women — in a bind. Moms were more likely than dads and non-parents to leave the workforce to care for their kids who were stuck at home studying remotely. 

But pandemic-era stimulus packages that funded childcare helped ensure early educators kept their roles, and that thousands of programs could keep running. The federal support also helped reduce attrition, a problem that has long plagued the notoriously underpaid childcare sector. Attrition continues to be an issue, particularly now that those pandemic-era funds have been exhausted. 

Moms recovered relatively quickly from the shutdown, and then their labor force participation went on to hit some of the highest percentages on record, with prime-aged (25 to 54) mothers of young children surpassing the 70% mark in recent months. That’s still lower than mothers of teens, who have frequently exceeded an 80% labor force participation rate since 2023. However, this all pales in comparison to prime-aged fathers who have participation rates that frequently approach and surpass 95%, irrespective of their child’s age. 

When the majority of the pandemic stimulus package funds ran out in September 2023, the consequences began to show up in the labor force participation data, with participation rates for moms with young children taking a dip. However, despite that slight downward trend, their numbers have remained elevated compared to before the pandemic. 

How are they doing it — especially with nearly half of all kids under six living in a childcare desert as of 2025? The option of teleworking seems the logical answer. But with return-to-office mandates taking effect starting around 2023 and today’s renewed push for 5 days in-office per week — while major media outlets plaster the drawbacks of telework across their headlines — it’s not clear how permanent this option may be.

Other prominent voices seem bent on convincing us that telework plays a significant negative factor in women’s career advancement. In her new memoir, business executive Emma Grede, cofounder of the shapewear and loungewear company SKIMS, promotes the idea of being a “three-hour mom”  in which she quite literally describes spending three hours on “high impact” time with her children before her team takes over. She also calls remote work “career suicide,” arguing that women need in-person visibility to get ahead. Grede provocatively highlights the cultural shift that’s happening here: Moms are participating in and prioritizing work in a way that holds a stigma for them that doesn’t apply to dads. (Grede, though, argues her point from a perch of financial abundance that causes the sentiment to fall flat.)

I recently took a closer look at the question of how telework may be impacting mothers’ labor force participation. Specifically, are return-to-office mandates having any major effect on maternal labor force participation? I discovered that while telework may have had some small benefit, helping keep moms with moms with kids under five in the labor force, it’s still not a very big piece of the puzzle. Nearly seven in 10 working moms with young kids aren’t teleworking at all. And among parents of school-aged children, I didn’t find very significant discrepancies in telework rates between mothers and fathers. 

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Bottom line: Most parents don’t telework.  

This is not to say that telework doesn’t have downsides that uniquely affect women (for the small share that do have access to remote work). Grede’s point about needing to be visibly at the table to advance their careers may hold some weight, according to research that shows remote work makes women less likely to be promoted or have a sponsor in the workplace, particularly as compared to men, who don’t face the same double standard for working remotely. But there is also evidence that gender-based discrimination is lower in remote settings. There is also evidence that remote work helps women stay in the labor force, especially those with young children. There are few things more detrimental to women’s advancement in the workforce than leaving it altogether. 

So, the career-killing telework phenomenon Grede warned us about in her memoir doesn’t seem to have as much of a negative labor market impact for moms as the media would have us believe. The real career killer for most mothers in the U.S. is insufficient access to high-quality, affordable childcare. Lack of action on childcare is already costing the American economy $172 billion per year, according to data from the business-leader group ReadyNation.

The connection is clear: After the Covid-era stimulus funds that funded childcare expired, we saw a simultaneous decline in mothers with younger kids holding down jobs. Now, the rising cost of living means many moms have had to figure out ways to make do. Imagine what could have been if policymakers had continued to make investments in childcare at a national level. How many more moms would be in the labor force? While states and cities have picked up the slack for the federal government to some extent, the nation is way past due for major investments in early childcare. 

This Mother’s Day, I want to remind us that it’s moms who have been driving U.S. labor market growth since the pandemic. But very little has been done to help maintain this growth. And while very few are privileged enough to have a team of caregivers enable them to live the so-called “three-hour mom” life, there’s something to be said for reexamining gendered expectations of time spent caring for children when 45% of moms are now the primary breadwinners for their families while prices — including for childcare — continue to rise. 

It’s time for federal investments in childcare to ensure we don’t take steps backward. The employed are now majority female. Forget about manpower. Today’s workforce is a matriarchy.