The U.S. workforce is still remarkably gendered, with women shut out of the highest-paying jobs

– Woman’s work. Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases data on the occupational makeup by gender, race, and ethnicity of hundreds of jobs. And while it is not exactly breaking news that some professions skew heavily female or male, the degree to which some jobs are still gendered is striking. 

Per the BLS’s data, women made up 47% of the U.S. Workforce in 2023 but 99% of skincare specialists, 96.7% of preschool and kindergarten teachers, and 96.4% of legal secretaries. Meanwhile, 99% of construction equipment operators, 98.6% of pipe layers, and 98.4% of bus and truck mechanics are men. 

Women are also overrepresented in child care, many counseling fields, and health care (aside from surgeons and dentists). Meanwhile, the shares of women in maintenance, construction, and certain tech jobs like software and web development remain disproportionately low.

The BLS data also includes the racial and ethnic composition of hundreds of professions. It shows some 96.2% of farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers are white, while 48.4% of postal service mail sorters and processors are Black and 41.1% of medical scientists are Asian. Compare that to the total workforce’s composition: It’s 76.5% white, 18.8% is Hispanic, 12.8% is Black, and 6.9% is Asian.

Reading through the BLS’s data, I was reminded of a recent report from the Pew Research Center, which found that women have been increasing their presence in many of the top-paying fields in the U.S. Since the 1980s, now accounting for around 35% of the highest-paying roles. But as we know, change is slow, especially when it comes to gender parity. Women still make up the minority of almost all of the 10 highest-compensated occupations, including physicians, dentists, chief executives, accountants, lawyers, and pilots. 

The only exception from the top 10? Pharmacists, with women making up 57.8% of the workforce, per the BLS. (There’s good reason for that: Harvard economist and recent Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin dubbed pharmacy “a most egalitarian profession” owing in part to its flexible work hours and other family-friendly policies.)

Among those top 10 careers, the share of women has grown substantially since the ‘80s for lawyers, physicians, and dentists. It’s engineering that still has the most notable lag (as well as airplane pilots and navigators, only an astounding 7% of whom are women). Gender discrimination, educational attainment, and childcare duties all play roles here, among other factors.

Of course, a pay (and respect) differential is one consequence of a deeply gendered workforce. There are others, including reports indicating women’s jobs are much more likely to be disrupted by generative AI.

Alicia Adamczyk
[email protected]
@AliciaAdamczyk

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PARTING WORDS

"It’s strange, because every single morning I have to decide if I am a 15-year-old girl or an old lady near to death."

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