Health Services
Amanda Woodruff-Truog returned to her job as a travel nurse last year shortly after giving birth to her third child. Demand for nurses is so high that the 29-year-old has enjoyed her pick of locations and jobs.

“I just wanted to be back in the field,” she says. Her husband sold his company in Florida to move to Illinois, the location of her current job, and he’s working part time and helping to take care of the children while Woodruff-Truog works and pursues a master’s degree at Purdue University.

“There’s definitely not enough hours in the day, but for some reason we make it work,” she said.

Laura Rosner, senior economist and partner at Macropolicy Perspectives in New York, said it’s “up in the air” whether a greater share of women will continue to join the labor market. But America’s counterparts in advanced economies might offer clues.

Global Comparison
Prime-age women in the U.S. used to work nearly as much or more than their peers in Canada, Germany and the U.K. In recent decades, however, their employment rates have slipped behind.

San Francisco Fed economists including Mary Daly -- who now runs the regional bank -- have suggested that America’s comparatively-weak parental leave system could be holding back its female employees vis-a-vis their Canadian counterparts.

Still, the fact that America’s young women are staging a reversal -- and one driven by mothers -- suggests that there may be room for catch-up even absent major policy changes.

“The gap that we see with other countries may not just be structural -- there may be a cyclical component here, too,” Tedeschi said.

U.S. employers increasingly offer family-related benefits like paid leave and on-site lactation rooms, Society for Human Resource Management survey data show, changes that could help some women to stay at their jobs.

Labor Comeback
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists point out that labor-force participation among women has been a cornerstone of recent progress in the job market. They see room for another “modest increase” of prime-age females in the labor pool this year. Without more permissive family-work policies, however, the scope for a full catch-up to other advanced economies is limited.