Women Find Working at Home Better Than Office Jobs

The latest jobs data from the U.S. government shows that between January and July 2025, 212,000 women left the workforce while 44,000 men entered it, Katy Kay reported for BBC News.

The number of women considering leaving their jobs or reducing their hours has grown since COVID-19.

As with all economic data, there’s likely more than one reason why women are quitting while men are being hired.

The trend is striking because it comes at a time when growing numbers of women in high-performing, white-collar jobs say they’re rethinking their relationship with their careers.

In a recent piece for The New York Times, Issie Lapowsky explored what some are calling “the power pause.”

After years of leaning in and pursuing career growth, a portion of college-educated women are either going part-time or quitting entirely. Choosing not to work is clearly not financially viable for many — if not most — people.

And while more data are needed to determine how significant the trend is, it aligns with findings from numerous surveys in recent years: the number of women considering leaving their jobs or reducing their hours has grown since COVID-19.

“What’s been interesting is that the data bore that out. There has been an uptick since the pandemic in women identifying as stay-at-home moms — many of them say they made the choice to spend more time with their children, not because they couldn’t afford childcare. There was also an increase in women identifying as working part-time from home. At the same time, record numbers of female leaders — mothers and non-mothers — were leaving their companies, according to a McKinsey and LeanIn study,” Lapowsky explained.