Women have accounted for essentially all net U.S. job growth since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, a trend that widened sharply in the most recent employment report.
The Labor Department’s Employment Situation report for August, released Friday, showed total non-agricultural payrolls rose by 162,000 for the month, well above the 31,000 average monthly gain of the prior year. Women accounted for the vast majority of that growth, continuing a pattern visible since January 2025.
Women’s cumulative payroll employment has risen by roughly 765,000 since December 2024, while men’s employment is down slightly, by about 6,000, over the same period, according to Mike Konczal, director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, a left-leaning nonprofit. Konczal’s analysis, drawn from the BLS Current Employment Statistics survey, found women accounted for the entirety of net job growth over that stretch and 82% of it over the past 12 months alone.
The August report reinforced that divergence. Restaurants and bars added 59,000 jobs and local government education added 42,000 — together nearly two-thirds of the month’s total gain, and both sectors with heavily female workforces. The BLS reported that local government education employment has shown little net change since January 2025, meaning last month’s gain largely reversed a summer dip rather than reflecting new hiring.
Manufacturing, a traditionally male-dominated sector, also grew for a second straight month, up 16,000 in August and 58,000 since a low point in December 2025, driven by machinery and fabricated metal product manufacturing.
The unemployment rate held at 4.1% in August. Joblessness among adult women stood at 3.5%, compared with 4.0% for adult men. Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% over the year, the slowest annual pace since May 2021, and labor force participation has fallen half a percentage point since January.
BLS revised June and July payroll figures up by a combined 55,000 jobs, it said Friday. The next employment report, covering September, is scheduled for release October 2.
The gender divergence comes amid historically slow overall job growth under the Trump administration compared with his first term and the final years of the Joe Biden presidency. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by roughly 716,000 between January 2025 and June 2026, according to BLS data — about a third of the 2 million jobs added over a comparable 17-month stretch at the end of the Biden administration. Much of that gap traces to a shrinking federal workforce, which has contracted by more than 300,000 jobs since Trump took office — largely a function of the president’s early push for mass federal layoffs and buyouts.
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