- The proportion of working mothers of young children fell 3 percentage points from January to June.
- About 212,000 women above 20 years old have left the job market since January.
- A dearth of child care and job flexibility and government layoffs are reasons women leave the workforce.
A significant number of working moms are heading home and an analysis in The Washington Post says a dearth of child care and job layoffs are together driving the exodus.
Per the Post, “The share of working mothers age 25 to 44 with young children has fallen nearly every month this year, dropping by nearly 3 percentage points between January and June, to the lowest level in more than three years,” based on an analysis of federal data by Misty Heggeness, a professor at the University of Kansas and former principal economist at the Census Bureau.
Working moms got some of the credit for the job market’s post-pandemic comeback, the Post reported. But that’s changing as remote work and flexible schedules are disappearing and government layoffs have sent many others home.
Heading back home?
According to the Labor Department, roughly 212,000 women older than 20 have stopped working or seeking jobs since January. There’s an especially big drop for Black women and those ages 25 to 34, per the data.
“The U.S. is the only advanced economy that’s had declining female labor force participation in the last 20 years, and a lot of that is because of lack of social safety net and caregiving supports,” Kate Bahn, chief economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told the Post. She called it a long-term trend that appears to be worsening.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in July that 57.1% of women 16 and older were in the workforce. Among those 20 and over, the share was 58.9%, compared to 70.5% of men.
Time reported that 212,000 women age 20 and over have left the workforce this year, noting that “by contrast, 44,000 men have entered the workforce since January.”
That article, too, quoted Heggeness. She said that between January and June, labor force participation for women ages 25 to 44 who lived with a child younger than 5 fell almost 3 percentage points, to 55.9%. “It’s a big reversal,” per Time. “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.”
Flexible work schedules disappearing
The federal government ordered workers back to the office five days a week in January and so did some big companies, including Amazon, JP Morgan and AT&T.
The Flex Index reported that just under a quarter of Fortune 500 companies had returned to in-office, full-time staffing by the end of the second quarter. The index tracks trends in remote work.
Still, the index said just one-third of companies require everyone to work in the office; most still have hybrid work arrangements. But 43% of those are structured, with most requiring three days in the office and allowing two days remote.
The index also notes that a “clear compliance gap exists.” Attendance has in some cases been low. Structured hybrid is common with large companies, while small companies tend toward flexible schedules.
Julie Vogtman of National Women’s Law Center told Time that it’s “not a coincidence that women’s participation in the workforce is falling as flexibility disappears. Women capitalized on remote work and flexibility during the pandemic and stopped exiting the labor force. Now many are not able to do so.”
“Women still take on the lion’s share of caregiving responsibilities, and they are more likely than men to be navigating how to meet those caregiving responsibilities while holding down a job,” she said. “They are also more likely than men to feel that they have to leave the workforce when their balancing act becomes unmanageable.”
Time notes another reason women have left the workforce this year. “Some of the decline in participation comes from lower-income women in jobs that have historically had to be done in person full-time, even during the pandemic. Those women are struggling because federal dollars for childcare have declined significantly in 2025. That money helped many centers stay open and charge lower tuition than they otherwise would have. That funding ended in September 2024, forcing many centers to close or raise tuition, leaving some families without options."
Correction: An earlier version of this story got Julie Vogtman’s first name wrong. The story has been updated.