STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We've been talking today about the job market. It's in a kind of holding pattern. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth has been slowing down, but people are not necessarily leaving the workforce. We're talking here about workforce participation. That changes from time to time. And some groups are slipping out in greater numbers than others. Our colleagues from The Indicator, Darian Woods and Wailin Wong, explain why moms are scaling back on their work lives.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Nicole Damstetter lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband, their 4-year-old daughter, two dogs, a cat and five chickens.
WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: You've got your own eggs, right?
NICOLE DAMSTETTER: Yes.
WONG: So you're, like, making money in this economy (laughter).
DAMSTETTER: It's great, it's great. I use them to barter with the neighbors.
WONG: (Laughter)
WOODS: Nicole spent roughly the last decade in the tech sector helping nonprofit organizations use software. And she says she had always defined herself by her job. But that began to change when her daughter started part-time preschool.
DAMSTETTER: She was really coming alive and getting this personality being at preschool. And then I started to think ahead and realized I've only got a little time left before she starts kindergarten. And I really reflected that I wanted to be home with my daughter.
WONG: Nicole quit her job in April, and she wasn't the only mom who left their job this year. In the first half of 2025, the percentage of moms in the labor force fell from around 70% to 67%.
WOODS: These numbers come from economist Misty Heggeness. She's a professor at the University of Kansas and the author of a forthcoming book called "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind And Redefine Our Economy."
MISTY HEGGENESS: What we're seeing now is, you know, a couple of years out from the pandemic, some of the larger employers in the federal government have really pushed on this idea of return to office. And I think it's had an unintended consequence on caregivers' ability to work, and we see that in the data.
WONG: In other cases, even when employers are flexible, it still doesn't work out. That was what happened with Ivy Abid. Her background is in science education, and she had been working full-time at Chicago Public Schools organizing career fairs and helping high school students get internships. Ivy is also a mom to a 2-year-old daughter.
IVY ABID: And she's wonderful and the light of my life.
WOODS: Ivy's daughter has a condition that required a lot of hospital stays during the first year of her life. Things stabilized after a recent surgery, but Ivy's mother also started having memory problems. Ivy and her husband moved her mother from Alaska to Chicago.
WONG: Ivy and her supervisors tried to work out a part-time arrangement, but she needed even more flexibility than what her school could offer. So she traded her full-time job for a part-time role teaching biology at a community college.
WOODS: Ivy says she's happy with her new work-life balance. She's gotten to spend more time with her daughter and her mother. She's even found time for hobbies like bike riding. The downside is the hit to her income.
ABID: I'm doing the same kind of work that would be earning $45 or $50 an hour if I were a full-time employee. But as a part-time employee, in order to get that flexibility, I have to get paid half as much.
WOODS: A common thread in the stories we heard is that some moms are rethinking their relationship with work.
WONG: These conversations are what economist Misty Heggeness said should be happening among employers and policymakers. She hopes those conversations will lead to efforts on affordable child care and workplace flexibility. And that, she says, will help keep moms in the workforce.
WOODS: Darian Woods.
WONG: Wailin Wong, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
