Women Took Nearly All August Job Gains

The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Almost all of them went to women.

A CNBC analysis of the BLS data found women accounted for 158,000 of the month's payroll gains — roughly 98% of the total. Men accounted for the remaining 4,000 net positions, a contribution CNBC calculated as nearly 40 times smaller.

The unemployment rate held at 4.1%. The 162,000 figure was more than triple what economists had forecast, according to CNBC, and well above the 31,000 average monthly gain of the prior year, according to The Daily Wire's reading of the same BLS release. BLS also revised June and July payrolls up by a combined 55,000.

The gender split was first flagged by the Economic Security Project, a progressive nonprofit, in a Friday post by its director of policy and research, Mike Konczal. Konczal's analysis, which The Daily Wire reported was drawn from the BLS Current Employment Statistics survey, found women's cumulative payroll employment has risen by roughly 765,000 since December 2024 while men's is down by about 6,000 — meaning women accounted for the entirety of net job growth over that stretch, and 82% of it over the past 12 months.

What Drove It

Two heavily female sectors did most of the work. Restaurants and bars added 59,000 jobs and local government education added 42,000 — together nearly two-thirds of the month's total gain, per The Daily Wire's account of the BLS report. The local government and education figure alone was about a fourth of the net gain, CNBC reported.

Health care, which CNBC described as the engine of labor market growth for more than a year, kept adding positions. BLS data cited by CNBC shows more than four out of every five workers in health care and social assistance are women, and women hold close to three-quarters of positions in education, training and library occupations.

There is a caveat inside the education number. The Daily Wire reported that BLS said local government education employment has shown little net change since January 2025 — meaning August's jump largely reversed a summer dip rather than representing new hiring.

Manufacturing, a traditionally male-dominated sector, also grew — up 16,000 in August and 58,000 since a low point in December 2025, driven by machinery and fabricated metal product manufacturing, according to The Daily Wire. Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told CNBC the report showed women's hiring strength in male-dominated sectors like manufacturing as well.

The Underlying Numbers

CNBC put the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for women at 3.9% in August, down 0.4 percentage points from a year earlier, and the male rate at 4.4%, equal to where it sat in August 2025. The Daily Wire, citing the adult (20-and-over) breakouts from the same release, reported 3.5% for adult women and 4.0% for adult men.

Over 12 months, CNBC reported, the level of employed women has grown by more than 870,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis while the number of employed men has fallen by nearly 1.5 million. Ullrich told CNBC the gap between the number of jobs held by women and by men has climbed to levels never before seen.

Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% over the year. The Daily Wire characterized that as the slowest annual pace since May 2021, citing Trading Economics, and reported labor force participation has fallen half a percentage point since January.

The broader picture is a slow one. The Daily Wire, citing BLS data and a FactCheck.org analysis, reported nonfarm payroll employment rose by roughly 716,000 between January 2025 and June 2026 — about a third of the 2 million added over a comparable 17-month stretch at the end of the Biden administration — and that the federal workforce has contracted by more than 300,000 jobs since President Donald Trump took office.