You probably know a woman supporting an unemployed man. Maybe you\u2019ve been that woman. What used to be an embarrassing secret has quietly become a macroeconomic data point, and now teh Federal Reserve has the receipts.<\/p>\n
As of early 2026, women held more payroll jobs than men in the United States. This has happened twice before \u2014 briefly during the Great Recession and again just before Covid \u2014 and both times it reversed. Laura Ullrich, a former regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond who authored a new analysis through Indeed\u2019s Hiring Lab<\/a>, says this time is structurally different.<\/p>\n \u201cIt definitely doesn\u2019t, to me, seem like the change has been driven by a recessionary period, which is what typically drives it,\u201d she told\u00a0Fortune. \u201cThis seems to be more of a long-term decline that\u2019s led to more of a permanent shift going forward, or at least semi-permanent.\u201d<\/p>\n The gap by the numbers<\/p>\n In the early 1990s, men held nearly 7 million more jobs than women. That gap gradually shrank over the last three decades, and is now gone. <\/p>\n The trend continued over the last year, Ullrich said, pointing to labor force participation rate data from the Federal Reserve. Over the last 12 months, jobs held by men<\/a> fell by a net 142,000, while women gained 298,000<\/a>. Of the 1.2 million jobs added between February 2024 and February 2026, two-thirds went to women.<\/p>\n The gender gap in labor force participation rate has also narrowed. The male rate has fallen nearly 20 points since tracking began in 1948, from 86.7% to 67.2% today. The female rate jumped from 32% to 57.2% in that span.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not women entering, it\u2019s men leaving<\/p>\n This is where the narrative gets complicated \u2014 and more interesting.<\/p>\n Both male and female participation rates are lower than they were in 2000. But men are falling off at a rate that dwarfs women\u2019s decline. Right before Covid, the male labor force participation rate was 69.2%. It\u2019s now 67.2% \u2014 a two-point drop. The female rate dropped just 0.6 points over the same period.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fewer men entering,\u201d Ullrich said. \u201cYounger men today are less likely to be working than their fathers were at that same age.\u201d<\/p>\n So who\u2019s supporting them? <\/p>\n \u201cThere has been more of a transition where parents are supporting their adult children for longer,\u201d she said. \u201cThe data do show that more young adult men live with their parents than women. The wealth transfer from older generations to younger generations is part of that story.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there are the partners. \u201cAlmost everybody you talk to will have a story\u201d about supporting an unemployed man, Ullrich said, adding that what\u2019s changed isn\u2019t the dynamic itself, but the fact that it no longer carries the stigma it once did. The stay-at-home boyfriend, once a punchline, is now a statistically significant labor market phenomenon.<\/p>\n A landmark paper<\/a> published in the\u00a0Journal of Political Economy, first circulated through the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that roughly 70% of the hours young men aren\u2019t working are being spent on video games and recreational computer use. The economists calculated that improvements in gaming technology since 2004 alone can explain nearly half the increase in young men\u2019s leisure hours.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the story \u2014 the basement story,\u201d Ullrich said, in reference to a trope of young men playing video games in their parent\u2019s basement.<\/p>\n The opioid epidemic compounded it, hitting non-college-educated men especially hard. And critically, men, compared to women, largely don\u2019t qualify for government assistance programs like SNAP<\/a> or TANF without a disability, meaning when they exit the workforce, the financial burden falls on whoever is closest to them.<\/p>\n The jobs that are growing and the jobs that aren\u2019t tell you almost everything.<\/p>\n Healthcare and social assistance, which are 78.9% female, added 1.8 million jobs between July 2023 and July 2025, accounting for more than half of all U.S. job growth during that period. But male-skewing sectors like manufacturing, tech, financial activities, and media have been stagnant or contracting.<\/p>\n One driver for this is women already have the training for the jobs that exist. As of 2023, 87% of nursing bachelor\u2019s students were women. In speech-language pathology, a six-figure profession, 96.4% of master\u2019s students are female. Medical schools have been majority-female since 2019.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWomen are the ones who have the training for these jobs,\u201d Ullrich said. \u201cThe growth that\u2019s happening in the economy in terms of jobs is happening in female-dominated sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n The pipeline is female, the growth sectors are female, and the jobs most protected from AI displacement \u2014 caregiving, healthcare, in-person services \u2014 are female. The jobs most exposed to AI are disproportionately held by men. More strikingly, Ullrich noted, is as women move into the workforce and up the corporate ladder, they create jobs for women, including daycare, pet care, and in-home services.<\/p>\n What it means<\/p>\n Economist Richard Reeves, a Brookings scholar<\/a> who dove into the economic data behind the male loneliness epidemic in the book Of Boys and Men, has argued that the same cultural efforts that moved women into STEM need to be applied in reverse, steering men toward healthcare, education, and psychology.<\/p>\n So far, there\u2019s little sign of that happening. The educational programs feeding the growth sectors are, if anything, becoming more female over time.<\/p>\n As Ullrich put it, the trend in the labor force participation gap shows no post-recession bounce, no cyclical correction, no historical parallel to prior reversals. It\u2019s more like a one-way door.<\/p>\n