# Women hold more jobs, and still less pay

> Women just took the majority of U.S. payroll jobs without a recession doing the work, but the paycheck gap starts on graduation day.
- Title: Women hold more jobs, and still less pay · Fortune | Shortify
- Summary: Women just took the majority of U.S. payroll jobs without a recession doing the work, but the paycheck gap starts on graduation day. Job counts and pay are…
- Keywords: gender pay gap, labor market, employment, parenthood, wages, Women, hold, more, jobs, still, less, pay
- Source: Fortune — https://fortune.com/2026/09/11/women-hold-more-us-jobs-men-earn-less-salary
- Author: Muskaan Arshad
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: gender pay gap, labor market, employment, parenthood, wages
## Women take the majority
For only the third time in U.S. history, women hold more payroll jobs than men. Unlike the last two times, no recession pushed it there.
## The gap starts at graduation
Class of 2023 women with a bachelor's degree started at $59,778 on average. Men with the same degree started at $72,190, about 83 cents on the dollar.
## Men are shedding jobs
Over 12 months, employed women grew by more than 870,000 while men lost nearly 1.5 million jobs. In August, women took 158,000 of the 162,000 positions added.
## Seven million missing men
Roughly 7 million fewer men work today than in the 1990s. Participation for men 20 and older fell to 69.4% in August 2026, down from 75.8% twenty years earlier.
## Nobody agrees on why
Some blame video games. Economists Remy Levin and Daniela Vidart argue men who enter a weak job market turn pessimistic and stop looking, and the retreat looks structural.

> This seems to be more of a long-term decline that's led to a more permanent shift going forward
## The winning jobs pay less
Health care, education, and care work drive the gains and sit at the low end of the pay scale. Women outnumber men 3 to 1 in teaching and 8 to 1 in nursing, and are under a third of science and engineering.
## Then comes the first child
Claudia Goldin's Nobel-winning research found early-career gaps are small until a woman has her first child. After that her earnings never catch up, even against fathers in the same job.

> You could look at it and say, 'Yay, women.' But I don't think it's necessarily a positive story for women overall
## Key takeaway

Job counts and pay are two different scoreboards, and women are only winning one of them.