A study by Pew Research Center shows that women make up a larger proportion of the college-educated workforce than men.
Women first overtook men in late 2019, and have stayed above them through the COVID-19 pandemic, as the pandemic has shrunk the overall size of the U.S. workforce.
The number of college-educated workers has grown overall since 2019, but the growth has been mostly among women.
The number of women with a bachelor’s degree or a higher education level grew from 29.1 million in 2019 to 31.3 million in 2022, while the number of such men grew only from 29.1 million to 30.5 million in the same period.
The disproportionate increase in college-educated women in the workforce coincides with the decrease in non-college-educated women.
The COVID-19 pandemic severely hurt the labor market for those without a college degree, with the raw number of women without a college degree in the labor force decreasing by 4.6% since 2019.
Pew explained the shift as happening because female participation in the labor market has either the same or increased, while male involvement has fell.
“In the second quarter of 2022, the labor force participation rate for college-educated women was 69.9%, the same as in the second quarter of 2019. In contrast, men and most other educational groups now have lower rates of labor force participation than they did the second quarter of 2019,” the study reads.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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