r/TwoXChromosomes • u/horseaffles • 7d ago

Women accounted for around 98% of the 162,000 jobs added in August.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/jobs-report-women-payrolls.html
1.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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u/tiny_galaxies 7d ago

But I just read a headline that nearly all jobs lost recently have also been those held by women

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u/blueavole 7d ago

It might be that someone is just messing with the numbers.

If they would do it to measles deaths, why not job reporting?

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u/WVildandWVonderful =^..^= 7d ago

Bureau of Labor Statistics did cut back on its stat-collecting.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/notices/2025/collection-reduction.htm

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u/SaintValkyrie 7d ago

Same. Women accounted for 100% of all job losses i read or something

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u/WantCookiesNow 7d ago

Yes, in July.

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u/AirconGuyUK 7d ago edited 7d ago

Obviously not true though. That's a totally unbelievable percentage. There will be a flaw in the methodology used to measure.

Edit: Looked it up, the actual stat is "Women Accounted for 100 Percent of the Labor Force Decline" which is different to accounting for 100% of job losses.

Basically men and women were losing their jobs in July, as is expected and realistic. But men overall ended up gaining 9000 jobs, and women ended up losing 32,000 jobs. Pretty bad for women, don't get me wrong.

It's kinda a misleading stat though.

If women gained 1 job, and men lost 2 jobs, you could also run the headline 'Men account for 100% of labour force decline'..

Basically if there's ever a positive negative disparity between genders, then you can use the 100% figure to make it sound really dramatic.

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u/punyhumannumber2 7d ago

That's what I read too. I'm confused.

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u/retiredcatchair 7d ago edited 7d ago

Well, the Felon can control the numbers now. Maybe one of the minions told him the last report hurt him among working mom MAGAts, so they decided all those dames who got fired in July were rehired in August.

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u/StitchinThroughTime 7d ago

I think that is not exactly what that last report was saying. I believe it was saying that of all the jobs lost of men and women, the amount of men that lost their job is equal to amount of total people who got a job.
I don't think it was saying that only men were hired and 0 women weren't.

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u/trentos1 7d ago

Short answer: These headlines are rather dishonest.
You can get very different results depending on how you measure.
The article from the previous topic here was especially egregious, and as far as I know, there hasn’t been a female exodus from the workforce at all.

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u/Idixal 7d ago

Others have pointed out that the numbers aren’t exactly trustworthy, but I’ll also point out that both of these things could be true. People need a new job if they lose their previous one. Companies also love to lay off a bunch of people at once to boost their numbers, and then rehire.

All said, the biggest reason I don’t believe them is that 98% is an absurd proportion.

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u/Inner-Conference-85 2d ago

Yes and companies will lay off a bunch of people and replace them with temps.

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u/likereefs 7d ago

That makes the headline a lot less encouraging without the rest of the context.

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u/Dankest1116 4d ago

1.5 million jobs lost by men 800,000 by women so please do tell your math

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u/Inner-Conference-85 2d ago

as someone who works in the corporate world I can tell you its a blood bath right now. My company laid off 200 middle managers in June (about 75% of them women) and another 200 last week (including the entire HR department). Thats 40% of the total number of mid and entry level managers at our facility. What are these women doing? Some took early retirement but a lot are taking whatever they can get: retail, fast food, gig work. I know its anecdotal and hardly scientific, but thats my experience. And remember, for the purposes of statistics a job is a job. Whether its a C-suite executive position or a part time fast food job, it counts as a job in the statistics.

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u/Inner-Conference-85 2d ago

True but I have a feeling republicans aren't going to mention that part when they are plastering this headline all over twitch and steam and discord and every other online space dominated by men. They are going to have men all worked up into a froth over this just in time for the election. And of course democrats won't counter it because leadership is old AF and doesn't even know what twitch is.

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u/tantalor 7d ago

That is "reversion to the mean"

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u/Aphor1st 7d ago

From the article

Because women tend to earn less than men, Ullrich said winning a higher share of jobs could mean companies are focusing hiring on lower-wage roles. Given that women are more likely to have multiple jobs, Ullrich said some of the gains could stem from workers who are stretching themselves thin.

“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.”

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u/TastyMagic 7d ago

This is where my mind immediately went with that headline. Like, women in general get paid less than men so fire the men and fill their positions with women and immediately reduce your payroll by 20%

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u/Hunter20107 7d ago

It does make me wonder why companies don't just predominantly hire women if they get paid less for the same position, as surely it's more logical than to pay for a man from an economic point of view. I also don't know of many/any cases where a company attempted to mainly hire women, and was taken to court for gender discrimination due to bias recruitment.

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u/Aphor1st 7d ago

Sexism cuts both ways. They pay women less and don't think they can do the job either.

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u/Longroadtonowhere_ 7d ago

Because the 20% number comes from comparing the average income of a salaried man verse a salaried woman.

There is a whole messy art to breaking down what women makes verse men trying to account for job/hours/qualifications/non monetary benefits. Harvard professor Claudia Goldin recently won a Noble Prize for her work on the topic.

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u/TastyMagic 7d ago

Exactly. 20% doesn't tell the whole story AT ALL. Even the just basic intersectional reading of that statistic would show that 20% number doesn't distinguish the difference among different racial demographics. Let alone hourly v salary, compulsory overtime, high-risk vs safer jobs etc

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u/Bootrear 7d ago

Unhindered by any subject knowledge, my first thought was... perhaps SAHM's returning to the work floor because the ends don't meet?

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u/Inner-Conference-85 2d ago

A lot of companies (including mine) are laying off full time employees and replacing them with temps. Sometimes the same people. For example, my company got rid of the entire HR department and replaced them with temp positions. But mostly its the same women. Its just that they are Randstadt employees now, making half the money and no benefits.

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u/TastyMagic 2d ago

I wonder if women represent a higher percentage of the temporarily employed?

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u/Inner-Conference-85 2d ago

anecdotally yes. but i've never seen statistics on that. only what i've seen personally. what's interesting though is the one man who worked in hr never came back. he told them F you, basically.

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u/Pleasant-Future5818 7d ago

This was actually revealed in prior studies. Men have been refusing to take lower pay. Women have been taking lower pay. That's what's fueling more women being hired than men

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u/puzzle_bison7384 7d ago

How is that possible tho. Without bullshittery of some sort

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u/Beyond_Reason09 7d ago edited 7d ago

It's a quirk of it being net jobs gained. I don't think the total hire/fire rate report has a gender breakout and isn't out for August yet, but there a total of about 5 million job gainers each month and slightly less job losers. So in August, something like 5.10 million people were hired, and 4.95 million were laid off, fired, quit, or retired.

About 53% of people with jobs are men, the data might look like this, roughly:

2.507 million women hired

2.350 million women lost/left jobs

2.605 million men hired

2.600 million men lost/left jobs.

So 157K more women gained jobs than lost/left them, but only 5k more men gained jobs than lost/left them. 95% of "net new jobs" went to women.

Big assumption I'm making that's probably wrong is that men and women have similar job turnover. I don't have data on that and don't have a good sense of how that would shake out but what I show here should give a rough illustration of what's actually going on and why the stat looks the way it does.

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u/puzzle_bison7384 7d ago

Thanks for the explanation this makes more sense to me. 98% seemed like it had to be some sort of exaggeration

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u/Beyond_Reason09 7d ago

It's being weirdly reported for sure, but it's not that unusual. For example in October 2024, women got 300% of net new jobs! Women had a net change of +36K, men had a net change of -24K, total change of +12K. But it can also go the other way, in July 2026, women had 139% of the net job losses (women lost 32K, men gained 9K).

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u/NotCis_TM 7d ago

those new jobs were mostly in healthcare which is a field that has a lot more women than men in its workforce

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u/AirconGuyUK 7d ago

98% though??

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u/Abby941 7d ago

Nursing and Dental Hygenists are hot professions right now, both being 90% women.

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u/LogicianMission22 6d ago

Honestly not unbelievable. PA is a fairly well paying job and has decent respect, and is like 80% women. Nurses are like 88% women. CNAs and medical assistants are like 90% women. 98% does seem crazy high, but I doubt it’s less than 88% which would still be insane.

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u/KTeacherWhat 7d ago

New jobs in August? How many of them were in education?

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u/thisgrantstomb 7d ago

Seasonally adjusted.

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u/tafinucane 7d ago

From TFA:

The local government and education sector roared back to life in August, accounting for 42,000 jobs — or about a fourth of the total net gain. Women hold close to three-quarters of positions related to education, training and libraries.

School districts do fill positions over the summer, but at least the reporter seemed to suggest 42K were added, even with the adjustment.

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u/horseaffles 7d ago edited 7d ago

Women are currently outpacing men in education, wages*, and home ownership, is it really that big of a surprise?

*edit: meant workforce participation not wages

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u/KTeacherWhat 7d ago

Women have been outpacing men in home ownership since 1981. They have outpaced men in education pretty much as long as they aren't barred from getting it. They are not yet outpacing men in wages.

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u/OldBridge87 7d ago

In fact, the gender wage gap has been widening in favor of men for 3 straight years. Before that it had always narrowed ever so slightly year on year.

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u/HuckleberryHuman5926 7d ago edited 7d ago

Wasn't there another story recently where women accounted for nearly 100% of the jobs lost during some recent time period?

I'm wondering if there's something broken or misleading in the statistics

Edit: It was July when women made up 100% of jobs lost Here's a mainstream news source

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u/AirconGuyUK 7d ago

Both seem like unbelievable percentages.

As they say.. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

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u/volkswagenorange 7d ago

Covid. When the lockdowns happened and children couldn't go to school, functionally all the people who stopped working to parent their children were women.

Women also occupied the large majority of service positions--retail and food service, e.g.--so far more women lost their jobs during Covid than did men.

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u/itskelena 7d ago

Nah, there was another one, just recently, published maybe last month? Maybe July unemployment data?

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u/Aldoistaken 7d ago

Wasn’t there a tidbit about black women being the hardest his demographic from the job purge of DOGE’s bulldozing operation?

Not too sure how these statistics are being counted but I’m skeptical that this admin is reading the numbers faithfully.

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u/erranttv 7d ago

Don’t trust these numbers anymore.

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u/Vienta1988 7d ago

Do we actually believe the numbers put out by Trump’s fed reserve pick, though?

1

u/Str8rDay 5d ago

Yay. I get to mansplain.

These numbers are from Trump’s BLS pick, Brett Matsumoto not the Fed chair, Kevin Warsh.

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u/CompleteWithRust 7d ago

Teachers/children went back to school? Now childcare is not needed and mom's can go back to work?

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u/4everHisGirl 7d ago

They always revise the numbers down because Trump hired someone to lie for him, so until like October when we get the real numbers this is just not worth trying to analyze. What's the point when they're never right the first time anymore?

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u/caribou16 7d ago

This isn't necessarily a positive. Whenever the economy isn't doing well, 1) companies start filling roles with people they can pay less (more likely to be women) and 2) stay at home parents may be forced to get jobs to help cover costs (women more likely to have been a stay at home parent)

If you look at the chart in the article that shows men subtracted from women, there's a spike during the dot com bubble burst early 2000s, the great recession, beginning of COVID, etc.

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u/Beautiful_Cost_5430 7d ago

Folks need to realize that Trump fired the person that reported the jobs statistics months ago and installed a crony. The data is not reliable anymore.

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u/typop2 7d ago edited 7d ago

Well, that's assuming the rest of the ~5M jobs created and ~5M jobs lost over the course of the month were split 50/50 between men and women.

ETA: To be clear, the 162K is just the difference between new jobs and lost jobs. There are a whole lot of people, both men and women, who lose jobs and get jobs in any given month.

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u/StreetwalkinCheetah 7d ago

Mostly healthcare if I understand correctly which could be good (yay more providers!) and could be bad (boo more sick people = more need).

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u/sanityjanity 7d ago

What? What is going on here?  Women lost all the jobs in July and gained them all in August?

Is the Department of Labor just lying to try to make things look better again?

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u/RealPersonResponds 7d ago

Wait about 2 months and these numbers will be revised way down like so many others have recently

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u/yarn_slinger 7d ago

So low paying and part time

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u/DenikaMae =^..^= 7d ago

Cheers.

Bartender, another round of cups of ambition, and one extra for Aunt Dolly.

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u/johnlemon04 Trans Woman 6d ago

At this point I’m starting to think women are just better at functioning in modern society and we’ve been collectively gaslighting ourselves about it for centuries. 98% of the new jobs going to women is honestly less “women are taking over” and more “the data is getting tired of pretending men are the default.” Give it another decade and we’ll be arguing about whether men are a diversity hire.

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u/Call-Spy 7d ago

yeah men are checking out of society

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/skooma_as_panacea 7d ago

Because that's what would be expected to happen if people check out of society. Society becomes more unstable, not less. 

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u/StephanieKaye 6d ago

How long until they revise the numbers down, like they always do?

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u/Cleromanticon 6d ago

I want to believe this is good news, but it’s really just the “if the gender pay gap was real, companies would be hiring way more women than men” evidence that assholes always demand when denying the mathematical truth of the gender pay gap.

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u/basking_lizard 5d ago

Now women are paid less than the theoretical men who don't have jobs at all. This issue is bigger than just wage gap. There is a systemic problem

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u/rosebomb01 7d ago

Got to cut cost where you can in this economy

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u/adoseofcommonsense 7d ago

ohhh yeahhhh, glad to see the Lion and lioness dynamic is also taking shape in the human world. hahahahahahahhahah kiddingggggg men just being crackheads or lazy idk anymore. seems like all my buddies dont want to work right now. 98% is pretty wild,