Time - It’s a stark number: 212,000. That’s how many women ages 20 and over have left the workforce since January, according to the most recent jobs numbers
released Aug. 1 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (By contrast, 44,000
men have entered the workforce since January.) The numbers show a
reversal of recent trends that saw more women, especially women with
children, finding and keeping full-time jobs.
Data show that between January and June, labor force participation rate of women ages 25 to 44 living with a child under five fell nearly three percentage points, from 69.7% to 66.9%, says Misty Lee Heggeness, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Kansas. It’s a big reversal. The participation of those women had soared in 2022, 2023, and 2024, peaking in January 2025, as flexible work policies helped women join the workforce and generate much-needed income for their families.
Workers have seen flexibility revoked in 2025 on a large scale. President Donald Trump ordered federal employees back to the office five days a week in January, though many had negotiated remote work arrangements and some had even moved far away from their offices. Amazon, JP Morgan, and AT&T also returned to five days a week policies in 2025. Overall, full-time in-office requirements among Fortune 500 companies jumped to 24% in the second quarter of 2025, up from 13% in the end of 2024, according to the Flex Index, which tracks remote work policies.
This has hit women with a bachelor’s degree in particular; their labor-force participation rate, which had been falling for decades before the pandemic, started ticking up again in 2020, peaking at 70.3% in September in 2024. It’s been falling ever since, and stood at 67.7% in July 2025, according to the most recent jobs report.
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