Women Continue to Make Education, Labor Gains

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A new Census report finds that for the first time, more women in the workforce have bachelor’s degrees than men (37 percent vs. 35). Women are gaining on the education front in general: for ages 25 to 29, 36 percent of women had a bachelor’s or advanced degree versus 28 percent for men. Women were also slightly more likely to have a high school diploma than men: for age 25 and above, it’s 87.6 percent versus 86.6 percent.
This is more evidence that men are increasingly falling behind women in the U.S. Back when the recession first began in December 2007, unemployment rates for men and women were roughly even — 5 percent and 4.8 percent respectively. But by August 2009, the two rates had diverged significantly, with unemployment among men at 10.9 percent, and only 8.2 percent for women. Which, according to the New York Fed, represented the largest unemployment gender gap since World War II.