In Friday’s jobs report coverage, we noted that the unemployment rate fell partly because 325,000 people dropped out of the labor force — that is, they were not even looking for work. Closer analysis reveals that the entirety of that decline was due to the departure of women — and particularly employed women — from the labor force.

In the month of February, the number of men in the labor force (working or actively looking) rose by about 23,000. By contrast, the number of women in the labor force fell by 339,000. (The numbers do not add to a 325,000 net loss because of rounding.)

Even more peculiar is what these lost female workers did before they dropped out.

Typically when we think of workers dropping out of the labor market these days, we think of workers who have been unemployed for a while and have simply given up looking for a job. But last month, almost all of the net loss of women from the labor force was accounted for by women who had jobs right before they dropped out.

Here is a pie chart for the 3,893,000 women who left the labor force in November — the gross number, so not subtracting those who newly entered the job market — sorted by how those women were categorized the month before:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Now the numbers are volatile, so take this with a grain of salt. We also do not know why so many women left their jobs to drop out of the labor force. Probably some of them were going on maternity leave, and some quit their jobs for other reasons.

I would guess that most of them, though, were laid-off workers who had not yet started looking for a new job. After all, state and local governments are shedding workers in large numbers, and most state and local workers are women.

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