Half of US Workers Are Women, Newspaper Reports - Building Gender Balanced Business

• The New York Times telegraphed it and now USA Today has reported it: Half of US workers are women, the newspaper says, even though — unlike in Canada — official confirmation is not yet available.

• As of July 2009, the latest official data, women held 48.7% of jobs, but USA Today said changes in employment meant they have now reached parity in the labour force, as 60.8% of adult women were working in August. In 1970 only 43.3% of women worked.

• By contrast, wrote the Center for American Progress senior economist Heather Boushey, male employment dropped to 67.4% in August, the lowest rate ever recorded and the result of a recession, and the resulting and perhaps permanent shift in employment, that dropped the share of US men working to below 7 in 10 for the first time.

• Of course, while female employment has continued to gain during the recession, wages relative to men’s have stagnated, or worse, at 78 cents to a man’s dollar.

• Boushey, writing in The Guardian, also noted that the historical shift in the US is fragile. With public-sector jobs at grave risk as US states’ budgets crumble because of recession, female employment might soon collapse like that of males did in 2008.

Heather Boushey’s commentary in The Guardian