Highest ever participation of women in 2016-17 at 56%
Over the past 70 years, womenâs participation in labor force activities has greatly expanded. Immediately following World War II, less than one-third of women were in the labor force. However, women soon began to participate in greater numbers, and their labor force participation rose rapidly from the 1960s through the 1980s before slowing in the 1990s. Women reached the peak of their labor force participation in 1999, with a rate of 60.0 percent. Since then, labor force participation among women has declined, to 56.7 percent in 2015. In addition, a large share of women work full time and year-round. Over time, women have increasingly attained higher levels of education: among women ages 25 to 64 who are in the labor force, the proportion with a college degree more than tripled from 1970 to 2015, increasing from 11 percent to 41 percent. Womenâs earnings as a proportion of menâs earnings also have grown over time. In 1979, women working full time earned 62 percent of what men earned; in 2015, womenâs earnings were 81 percent of menâs. [...] Womenâs labor force participation was 56.7 percent in 2015, down from 57.0 percent in 2014. Menâs labor force participation, which always has been much higher than that for women, was little changed at 69.1 percent in 2015. (See table 2.)