Today’s bleak jobs data come during the first week of Women’s History Month. To mark that, we’re taking a look back at how women’s labor force participation has grown over time – and how policy choices have shaped it. But first, we’ll start with this month’s data.
Today’s data for February reveal a dramatically slowing economy. The economy lost 92,000 jobs last month and earlier data were revised down, meaning previous months’ growth was less than initially estimated. While strike actions in health care played an important role in the February job numbers, other industries such as information and the federal government also declined. Trump’s policies have cost the federal government 330,000 jobs since its peak in the fall of 2024.
Women gained a mere 7,000 jobs last month, though they saw losses in private education and health (-11,000) and transportation and warehousing (-10,000). The unemployment rate for adult women 20 and older remained flat at 4.1 percent, while rates for women of color worsened. Black women’s unemployment increased from 6.4 percent in January to 7.1 percent in February, which, coupled with an increasing share of women looking for jobs, shows that Black women cannot find the jobs they are searching for in this economy. Latinas’ unemployment rate also increased, from 4.8 percent to 5.0 percent, despite a smaller share of Latinas being in the job market, underscoring the broad job market challenges for women of color as Trump strips away worker protections.
How do February’s data fit into women’s history more broadly? They continue to show how policy changes have shaped women’s opportunities. Let’s take women’s labor force participation for example. Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has traced the role of women’s growing educational opportunities and landmark legislation like 1978’s Pregnancy Discrimination Act in women’s rising labor force participation in the second half of the 20th century. As researchers Martha Bailey and Thomas DiPrete outline, women’s access to reproductive care, including birth control and abortion, dramatically improved their economic opportunities and labor force participation. They also highlight the impacts of civil rights-era legislation that improved gender equity such as the Equal Pay Act (1963), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Title IX (1972), which shaped not only the law, but likely influenced cultural expectations and business practices. But as national policymakers have failed to make headway on policies like paid leave – which we know from state policies helps support mothers’ attachment to the labor market – progress has stalled.
Of course, talking about women as a whole obscures important differences and oftentime inequities across communities. As Jocelyn Frye has written, Black women have some of the highest rates of labor force participation among women, though the types of job opportunities available to Black women have been – and continue to be – limited by racism and sexism. And while Latinas’ labor force participation rate has grown more rapidly than women’s overall, their levels are still lower than some other groups. Similarly, though the participation rate of disabled women has risen dramatically in recent years, systemic ableism and barriers to jobs have kept their participation rates shockingly low. Of course being in the labor force is just one piece of the equation. Due to a long history of discrimination and devaluing of women’s work – especially that of women of color, disabled women, queer women and other marginalized communities – women workers face a wage gap and are concentrated in jobs with fewer benefits and opportunities.
The realities of today’s job market for women – from wages, to hiring, to participation – are all shaped by policy choices, including the times policymakers failed to act, over the course of many decades. The Trump administration’s chaotic, harmful actions over the last year underscore how important policy choices are – and how fragile progress can be. Many essential workplace protections that keep workers safe on the job, ensure an inclusive workplace and promote equal opportunity have been gutted or are under threat. For example, the Trump administration has repeatedly worked to undermine The Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act (2022), a protection which has been shown at the state level to increase pregnant women’s participation in the work force. Women’s access to reproductive care has also been further undermined through cuts to health care and deliberate efforts to restrict abortion access. The consequences of these actions have begun to unfold – and will have ripple effects for years to come.
Women deserve workplaces that are free from discrimination and harassment, where they are fairly compensated and have policies in place – from paid leave to child care – that help them balance their work and care responsibilities. In short, workplaces where they can thrive. Looking back at history makes clear that the right policy choices can make this possible.
