From left to right, Life Alert’s Everett Kelly speaks to Maximilian Kegley Oyola and Dylan Flowers about job opportunities at the Mega Job News USA South Florida Job Fair at Amerant Bank Arena on September 25, 2026 in Sunrise, Florida.
Joe Radle | Getty Images
Friday’s weaker-than-expected jobs report may feel particularly bad for men.
As of September, women outnumbered men in the labor force for eight straight months, according to an analysis of government data by Indeed. This is the longest increase since 2010, according to the job search platform.
“There was a gap at the time because men lost their jobs,” said Cory Stahl, senior economist at Indeed. Because this time, women are winning.
gender difference
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday that U.S. payrolls rose by a net 29,000 in September, lower than economists’ consensus estimate of an 84,000-job gain.
Men accounted for just over half of the net job growth in September, according to a CNBC analysis of Friday’s BLS data. A month ago, men accounted for just 2% of salary growth.
Despite the monthly increase, the seasonally adjusted number of employed men in the United States fell by about 1.2 million in September compared to a year ago. During the same period, employment for women increased by more than 650,000.
Stahle said differences in labor market performance by gender can be partially explained by which industries are growing.
Health care, a major driver of the U.S. job market in recent years, accounted for more than half of the overall payroll growth in September. Women make up nearly four out of five workers in this sector.
But the BLS said in a release Friday that the pace of hiring health care workers in September was slower than the average for the past year. Therefore, women may not be receiving as much of a boost from this sector as they have in previous months.
Staehle said lower monthly salaries in industries with a high proportion of female workers, such as government, also weakened overall growth for women in the month.
