You probably know a woman supporting an unemployed man. Maybe you’ve been that woman. What used to be an embarrassing secret has quietly become a macroeconomic data point, and now the Federal Reserve has the receipts.
As of early 2026, women held more payroll jobs than men in the United States. This has happened twice before — briefly during the Great Recession and again just before Covid — and both times it reversed. Laura Ullrich, a former regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond who authored a March analysis through Indeed’s Hiring Lab, says this time is structurally different.
