A dramatic shift is reshaping who holds jobs in America, and the numbers tell a story few would have predicted decades ago.
New labor data shows that women have claimed the vast majority of jobs added to the US economy since President Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025.
Out of 468,000 total payroll jobs created, women secured 403,000 of them — a full 86% share. Men picked up only 65,000 positions over the same period.
Economist Justin Wolfers compiled the analysis, publishing his findings in a newsletter that tracks employment trends across American industries.
The result: women now outnumber men on the nation’s non-farm payrolls, something that has happened only twice before in recorded history.
Non-farm payroll numbers leave out agricultural work entirely.
Fifty-six years ago, the picture looked completely different. In 1970, men held non-farm jobs at nearly double the rate of women.
Two industries are fueling today’s imbalance — healthcare and education. Both fields have employed disproportionately more women for decades, and both continue to grow at a rapid clip.
Wolfers pointed to a specific breakdown of where the jobs went and where they disappeared.
“The mainly female category added 828,000, the mainly male category lost 218,000, and the roughly equal group lost 142,000 jobs since the start of Trump’s second term,” he wrote.
A single sector — private education and health services — absorbed a substantial portion of the newly created jobs. That industry was already more than 75% female by the time Trump returned to office.
According to Wolfers, comparing today’s job market to the labor force of the 1970s misses the bigger picture entirely.
He argued the American economy of 2026 bears little resemblance to the industrial and agricultural landscape that shaped decades-old political narratives about work.
He drew a comparison to American agriculture in the 19th century, when farming employed the majority of the population. Today, that figure has collapsed to roughly 1%.
Technology, not a decline in food’s importance, explains that collapse, Wolfers said.
“This shift didn’t occur because food became any less important. Rather, agricultural productivity improved so dramatically that we no longer need tens of millions of people to grow all the food we want,” he said.
As the nation grew wealthier throughout the 1900s, Americans gained the financial freedom to spend beyond basic necessities like food, Wolfers noted.
He said a nearly identical transformation is now unfolding inside American factories.
Manufacturing output in the US remains enormous, but machines have taken over much of the labor once performed by human workers.
“America continues to produce vast quantities of industrial goods — but technological advances allow us to manufacture far more with far fewer workers than before. Modern factories, like modern farms, are often more machines than people,” Wolfers said.
Higher productivity pushes workers toward less labor-intensive fields, while rising household incomes create fresh demand for services, according to Wolfers.
That demand is increasingly directed at healthcare, childcare, education, and elder care.
Wolfers tied these shifts to a larger demographic reality facing the country. “This is a central story of what happens when a country gets richer, more productive, and yes — older,” he said.
Industries built around care work have long relied on female labor, forming what’s often labeled the “pink-collar economy.” Wolfers said these fields continue to see limited interest from male job seekers.
To support his point, Wolfers cited a Bloomberg opinion piece authored by Betsy Stevenson, who previously served as chief economist at the US Department of Labor.
Wolfers concluded that narrowing the gender gap in job growth will depend on men entering fields that are actually expanding.
“If we want job growth for men to match that for women, men may need to move toward the industries that are actually growing,” he said.
Taken together, the data paints a picture of an economy moving further away from its industrial and agricultural roots and deeper into services — a trend Wolfers frames as decades in the making rather than a phenomenon tied to any single administration.
The shift raises questions about how the broader labor force will adapt as care-based industries continue expanding while traditionally male-dominated sectors contract.
