Women accounted for a staggering 158,000 of the 162,000 jobs added in August, representing around 98% of total payroll gains for the month.
That figure comes from a CNBC analysis of data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed men contributing just 4,000 net positions to overall payroll growth.
The male contribution was nearly 40 times smaller than the female contribution, marking a striking imbalance in a report that otherwise beat expectations by a wide margin.
The Economic Security Project, a progressive nonprofit, was first to flag the anomaly in Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics data release.
The gap between the number of jobs held by women compared with men has now climbed to levels never before seen, according to Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
“We are in the midst of a shift,” Ullrich said. “It is changing right before our eyes.”
Compared with 12 months ago, the level of employed women has grown by more than 870,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, while men have lost nearly 1.5 million employed workers over the same period.
Healthcare, considered the engine of labour market growth for more than a year, continued adding positions in August, with upwards of four out of every five workers in the industry being women.
The local government and education sector accounted for 42,000 jobs in August, roughly a fourth of the total net gain, a sector where women hold close to three-quarters of positions related to education, training and libraries.
The overall nonfarm payrolls figure of 162,000 was more than triple what economists had forecasted, with strength among women playing a significant role in pushing the number past expectations.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for women came in at 3.9% in August, down 0.4 percentage points from the same month a year prior, while the male rate jumped to 4.4%.
Heather Long, Navy Federal Credit Union’s chief economist, cautioned in a social media post that month-to-month data by gender can be volatile and urged observers to focus on longer-term trends instead.
Long said those longer-term trends show a “mom-cession,” a term used to describe the phenomena of mothers of young children leaving the workforce.
Because women tend to earn less than men, Ullrich noted that a higher female share of job gains could indicate companies are concentrating hiring on lower-wage roles rather than signalling broad economic progress for women.
Given that women are more likely to hold multiple jobs, some of the gains could reflect workers stretching themselves thin rather than securing strong, stable employment.
“You could look at it and say, ‘Yay, women,'” Ullrich said. But, “I don’t think it’s necessarily a positive story for women overall.”