For a few months in late 2009 and early 2010, just as the Great Recession began to give way to a fitful recovery, nonfarm employers in the United States reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics that they had more women working for them than men. This had never happened before. It hasn't happened since, either, but the nonfarm payroll employment totals for men and women (74.6 million versus 73.2 million in January) remain much closer together than they were before the recession. If past trends are any guide, in fact, it seems likely that women's share of payroll employment will pass the 50 percent line during the next recession and stay there for good.
This data is from what's called the establishment survey, the one that showed 200,000 payroll jobs to have been created in January. The other big source of monthly employment data—the household survey from which the unemployment rate is derived—still counts 82.3 million men with jobs to only 72.2 million women.
