The US Council of Economic Advisers on Changing Female Labor Force Participation

The 2023 Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), formally an annex to the Economic Report of the President transmitted to Congress in March, is a 500-page document expanding on a number of economic issues of current policy salience. One such issue is the leveling off and then edging down of female labor force participation after 2000, following several decades of a strong upward trend. The report discusses this reversal, which precedes the labor force disruptions wrought by the Covid pandemic. It notes that it is not seen in other advanced economies and is anomalous given the rising educational levels of women. The usual explanations point to the disproportionate demands on women for both childcare and elder care, in a society with relatively low levels of public transfers. Childcare expenses are especially burdensome in the United States. However, as the report remarks as deserving of further investigation, "declines in participation among women are broad-based and are actually steepest among single women without children."