April 15, 2026
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Experts in this article:
Mark Slack is a career expert and growth marketer with over 15+ years of experience. In that time, he's driven hundreds of...
Paden is a writer for SideHustles.com. He began writing professionally in 2014, and previously worked as a journalist for Huck,...
For most of US history, men made up the majority of the workforce. Women had fewer opportunities for employment, and those who did work faced lower pay and more stringent expectations. In recent years, that dynamic has slowly been shifting.
A new report from Indeed’s Hiring Lab has found that women now outnumber men in the workforce. Is this just a result of society becoming more egalitarian, or are there less obvious reasons that women have edged ahead of men in the workforce?
Around 30 years ago, men held 7 million more jobs than women. Since then, the gap between the number of men and women in employment has been closing. In 2020, women outnumbered men in nonfarm jobs by 109,000 jobs. 1
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected women’s jobs. Sectors that traditionally hired more women, such as retail and hospitality, were more impacted by restrictions during the pandemic.
Six years since the pandemic, women have once again moved ahead of men. According to federal data highlighted in Indeed’s report, the US added an additional 1.2 million jobs between February 2024 and February 2026. Two-thirds of those jobs, or around 814,000 roles, were held by women. 1 Not only has the gender gap closed, but it may have slightly shifted in favor of women.
On paper, women overtaking men in employment seems like progress. However, although women have more opportunities than they did 30 years ago, this alone doesn’t explain the shift. Another factor is that men are participating less in the labor market overall.
One of the fastest-growing sectors in the US is healthcare. Between 2023 and 2025, the US added an additional 3.5 million jobs. More than 38% of those jobs (1.35 million) were in healthcare and social assistance, two fields dominated by women. 1
Conversely, sectors where men traditionally outnumber women, such as construction and manufacturing, have experienced flat or negative growth. According to Indeed’s report, between February 2025 and February 2026, the number of jobs held by men “declined on net in 6 of those 12 months, and fell overall by 142,000” over the year. 1 At the same time, the total number of jobs held by women grew by 298,000.
If jobs in sectors like healthcare are increasing, why aren’t more men taking these roles? Considering the challenging job market applicants face in 2026, wouldn’t it make sense for men to move to whatever jobs are available?
Richard Reeves, an economist and founder of the advocacy group American Institute for Boys and Men, believes that men are reluctant to take on what they see as “women’s work.” Reeves told Axios that “men are missing out in the labor market because there are too many ‘no-go’ zones for male workers.”
While there were big drives to encourage women to move into STEM fields, there hasn’t been the same encouragement for men to move into traditionally female-dominated sectors. But Reeves believes that getting more men to work in healthcare is essential for “improving job prospects for men themselves.”
Even though female representation in the job market has increased, women still face challenges. Laura Ullrich, economic research director at Indeed, told Axios that jobs dominated by women still tend to pay less than those held by men. “If you’re seeing a shift toward more female employment, all else equal, you would see a shift toward lower wages,” she said. 1
The gender pay gap has been narrowing over the past few years, though there’s still a divide. According to a Pew Research Center analysis from 2024, women earned 85% of what men did in both part-time and full-time positions. 4 That’s better than in 2023, when women earned 81% of what men did, but the gap is still there.
Moreover, certain groups of women are still underrepresented in the workforce. An analysis from The Washington Post found that the share of working mothers aged 25–44 dropped nearly every month in 2025. From January to June 2025 alone, it dropped by 3%. This is partly due to return-to-office (RTO) mandates—63% of executives reported that more women than men left after they rolled out RTO policies, according to data from Upwork.
RTO mandates make it challenging for working moms to balance childcare alongside their professional lives. According to Catalyst, a nonprofit aimed at helping women advance in the workplace, 42% of women who voluntarily left their jobs cited caregiving responsibilities, including the cost of childcare, as their primary reason for leaving.
While structural changes to the labor market have put more women in the workforce, all workers face a new challenge: artificial intelligence. A late-2025 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that AI can currently do the work of about 12% of America’s workforce. 5
New research from the International Labor Organization (ILO) has also found that generative AI will more significantly affect women’s jobs. According to the research, around 29% of female-dominated occupations are exposed to generative AI, compared to 16% of male-dominated ones. 6 Women are more likely to work in clerical or administrative roles, such as secretaries, payroll clerks, and accounting assistants. The routine tasks of these jobs are more likely to be substituted by AI tools.
Not only are traditionally female-dominated jobs more at risk of AI, but women seem less willing to embrace these tools than men. In a survey from SideHustles.com, men were more likely to “feel excited” about using AI to look for jobs than women (37% vs. 25%). Mark Slack, a career expert at Side Hustles, said that men are “more willing to use it at virtually every stage of the job application process.”
Research from Harvard Business School also supports the notion that men are more gung-ho about AI. The research found that women are adopting AI tools at a 25% lower rate than men on average. Harvard Business School Associate Professor, Rembrand M. Koning, said that women tend to be more worried about using AI tools partly because they may be perceived as working unethically.
“Women face greater penalties in being judged as not having expertise in different fields,” Koning said. “They might be worried that someone would think even though they got the answer right, they ‘cheated’ by using ChatGPT.”
If women are reluctant to adopt AI tools, this could only widen the gender gap. These tools are increasingly being integrated into the workplace. Although women have now slightly overtaken men in the workforce, AI could make these gains temporary.
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