evidence: In 2019, 57.4 percent of all women participated in the labor force. This was up from 57.1 percent who participated in 2018, but 2.6 percentage points below the peak of 60.0 percent in 1999. By comparison, the labor force participation rate for men was 69.2 percent in 2019, little changed from the previous year and 17.4 percentage points below its peak of 86.6 percent in 1948. The rapid rise in women’s labor force participation was a major development in the labor market during the second half of the 20th century. Overall, women’s labor force participation increased dramatically from the 1960s through the 1980s, before slowing in the 1990s. With the dawn of the 21st century, labor force participation among women began a gradual decline, until the participation rate hit a recent low in 2015 of 56.7 percent. [...] Labor force participation varies by marital status and differs between women and men. Never-married women had the highest participation rate of all women, at 65.0 percent in 2019. Separated and divorced women were more likely to participate in the labor force (63.7 percent and 60.8 percent, respectively) than married women (58.6 percent). By contrast, married men were more likely to participate in the labor force (73.0 percent) than separated men (70.1 percent), never-married men (68.1 percent), and divorced men (64.7 percent). Labor force participation rates for widowed women and men, who tend to be older, were 19.8 percent and 24.2 percent, respectively. (See table 4.)