By Katherine Gallagher Robbins and Areeba Haider
The 2025 economy has been marked by uncertainty for millions of workers in the face of President Trump’s signature economic policies – erratic tariffs, increasing costs, a curiously stagnant labor market, and mass layoffs in the federal government all combine to draw a complicated picture of families’ economic conditions. Another trend to watch? The labor force participation rate of mothers with young children – the share of mothers with children under five who are either working or looking for work – is dropping with alarming speed. In just the first half of this year, this rate saw its steepest drop in more than forty years.
It’s another sign that the status quo isn’t working for working women.
New analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families and The 75 Million Project examines trends in labor force participation rates of mothers with young children by race in recent years. Examining 12-month rolling averages, we find the steepest declines in labor force participation, both since January 2025 and since December 2023 (when this metric peaked), have been borne by Black mothers.This analysis is based on 12-month rolling averages to smooth labor market volatility, especially for smaller populations. This means that the 12-month rolling average for December 2023 is the average of the 12 prior months (January 2023-December 2023). In fact, unlike mothers of young children overall, the labor force participation rate for Black mothers is lower now than it was prior to the pandemic at the end of 2019. The declines are particularly dramatic for college-educated Black mothers – and they have been most pronounced in recent months.
Our economy is not designed to support both formal work and caregiving needs. Mothers, especially those of young children, are often left at an impossible crossroads, juggling the extreme costs of child care, the lack of family-friendly policies in many workplaces, and the price of leaving the workplace completely. The country’s failure to grapple with and solve these systemic issues has limited women’s ability to make the choices that are best for them and their families, with serious consequences for their current and future economic security. The impacts of these policies go beyond individual families – they also harm our economy overall, as lower participation rates drive down the country’s gross domestic product (G.D.P.) and reduce our international competitiveness, making clear that policies that support families’ ability to balance work and caregiving are not nice to have, but rather essential aspects of our economy.
Black mothers of young children are facing the largest declines in labor force participation since rates for mothers of young children peaked in late 2023
Our analysis shows that since December 2023, the labor force participation rate of Black mothers with young children has dropped 2.8 percentage points, double the drop for young mothers overall and more than two-and-a-half times larger than the declines for white mothers, Latina mothers and Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) mothers, all of whom dropped by roughly 1 percentage point over this period.
Black mothers’ labor force participation declines have recently accelerated, while white mothers’ losses have plateaued.
The difference is especially stark in recent months. Comparing 12-month rolling averages for January and August 2025, the labor force participation rate for Black mothers of young children decreased by 2.5 percentage points, with AANHPI mothers following with a 1.9 percentage point drop. During this same period, the labor force participation rate of white mothers of young children stayed relatively flat.
The declines are particularly steep for highly educated Black mothers
Recent research by KPMG zeroed in on plummeting rates of labor force participation among college-educated mothers of young children as driving mothers’ decline in labor force participation, finding that since late 2023, the labor force participation among this group of women has dropped 2.3 percentage points – the largest decline of any group of looking at gender, parental status and educational attainment.
Breaking down the data for highly educated mothers by race and ethnicity reveals that Black mothers are once again driving the labor force participation decline. Since December 2023, the labor force participation rate of college-educated Black mothers with young children has dropped a whopping 5.0 percentage points, more than double the drop for highly educated mothers overall, who saw a 2.3 percentage point decline, and white mothers, who experienced a 2.4 percentage point drop. The decline for Latina mothers – 3.6 percentage points – was also larger than the overall change, while college-educated AANHPI mothers saw a slight increase over this period.
Among mothers without a B.A., AANHPI mothers have seen the sharpest drop, with Black and Latina mothers also experiencing sizable declines
The rates of labor force participation among mothers without a B.A. who have young children also dropped since December 2023, though to a lesser extent than their college-educated counterparts for nearly every racial and ethnic group.The exception is for AANHPI mothers, where college-educated mothers of young children saw increases in their labor force participation while mothers without a B.A. saw declines over this time period. Looking across racial and ethnic groups, our analysis finds that since December 2023, AANHPI mothers have seen the largest decline, dropping 5.7 percentage points, followed by Black and Latina mothers who experienced declines in labor force participation of 1.7 percentage points and 1.5 percentage points, respectively. The declines for women of color were larger than for mothers without a B.A. overall (1.1 percentage points) or white mothers (0.6 percentage points).
Black mothers of young children participate at the highest rates of any group of mothers with young kids – but their participation rates are now below their pre-COVID level.
The labor force participation rate for mothers of young children – across race – increased after the pandemic, likely due to policy decisions to reverse pandemic jobs losses and minimize the consequences of the pandemic on workers, including those with caregiving responsibilities. Now, those increases are waning; for Black mothers of young children, who consistently have higher labor force participation rates than other mothers of young children, their participation rate is lower than it was immediately before the COVID pandemic.
Conclusion
Women’s ability to participate in the formal workforce, earn money, save for retirement, and afford the lives they need to care for themselves and others are shaped both by cultural norms and by policy decisions made by those with power. And historically, those cultural and political narratives have been constructed differently for women based on their race, class, and more.
The story of Black women in the U.S. economy is one marked by their history of labor, from the early horrors of forced slave labor – compelled to care for other people’s children while being separated from their own – to being largely confined to domestic and service roles, where they were compensated with low wages and little consideration was given to their work or family responsibilities. As Black women face discrimination, disparities, and a system that is not designed around their needs in the present, it is vital to understand what may be driving their declining participation rates. And though changes in the employment of mothers of young children were underway before President Trump took office, his policy agenda is set up to accelerate economic insecurity for women, especially Black women. Those policies include attacks on anti-discrimination and landmark civil rights protections, steep cuts to vital programs tackling food insecurity and healthcare affordability, and an economic “strategy” that is driving up the cost-of-living; a smaller share of Black mothers with young children in the labor market is just one more glaring sign that our economic conditions are not working for millions of families.
These findings also come in the context of a broader conversation about women’s role and experience in the economy. In the last few months, headlines across prominent publications have emphasized mothers of young children leaving the workforce, overall declines in Black women’s labor force participation, shaky macroeconomic data, and rising inequality. Black mothers are more likely to be breadwinners for their families and often have higher rates of labor force participation than other mothers. And in times of economic trouble, they are often a bellwether for what is to come. There are 306,000 fewer Black women workers in August, compared to February 2025 and Black women’s employment to participation ratio has declined sharply in 2025. The unemployment rate for Black women was 6.7 percent in August, the highest it’s been in nearly 4 years and more than double that of white women (3.2 percent). A lack of data by sector for Black women makes it difficult to say precisely where Black women’s job losses are happening, but their overrepresentation in federal jobs has put them at risk.
Today’s economic trends for mothers of young children – and for Black mothers in particular – is likely a convergence of multiple factors. A decrease in the flexible and remote work opportunities that cropped up during the pandemic may be pushing out many women with competing caregiving responsibilities outside of the labor force. The shocking cost of child care is only growing for families, forcing many mothers with a desire to remain in the workforce to weigh the financial burden of child care with their long-term economic security. It could be that while the number of mothers of young children is growing, a lack of paid maternity leave is failing to keep some mothers of the very youngest children attached to the labor force. Some women may be choosing to leave the workforce for other reasons, including to pursue education or simply to spend time with their children when they’re younger if their economic situation allows for it.
There is no one clear reason for the drop in labor force participation for mothers of young children, and fully unpacking the impacts of policy decisions on the labor market requires time and patience. However, we know the economic consequences of a system that forces people to choose between their careers and caregiving can be dire, especially for women. The economic consequences of caregiving costs mothers more than $295,000 over their lifetime, hurting their savings, retirements, and other vital long-term indicators of financial health.
Paid leave, affordable child care, protections from discrimination, solutions for occupational segregation and the gender wage gap, building worker power, and more are proven tools to improve women’s experience and participation in the labor force. Women deserve real choices – instead of accepting a status quo that requires impossible compromise, we must build an economy that allows all women to pursue fulfilling, secure lives.
Methods note
National Partnership for Women & Families and The 75 Million Project analysis of Current Population Survey data via IPUMS. These data show 12-month rolling averages for mothers ages 25-54 with at least one child under five years of age for mothers with a Bachelor’s degree or more, compared to those with less than a Bachelor’s degree. All racial groups include Latinas and Latinas can be of any race. Sample sizes do not permit analysis of American Indian and Alaskan Native mothers.
