This Is the Job Most Commonly Held by Women

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Job Most Commonly Held by Women

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Women make up a little over 43% of the American labor force. While over 57% of all women in the United States are now working, the participation rate for men is currently over 69%. Women are more likely to work full time (defined as at least 35 hours each week) as well as year-round, but they still earn only 82% of what their male counterparts bring home.

The gender gap has undeniably narrowed since the introduction of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination by most employers on the basis of sex (among other things). The education level of working women has improved significantly, too. Over the past 50 years, the number of women in the labor force with college degrees has quadrupled. That doesn’t necessarily translate to more upper-echelon jobs, however.

To determine the job most commonly held by women, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data from the April 2021 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook.” Occupations with a labor force that is more than two-thirds female were ranked based on their total number of female workers.

Women account for over 75% of medical professionals, for instance, but make up only 40% of physicians and surgeons. The majority of legal workers are women, but almost 64% of lawyers are men. And only 27.6% of chief executives are women.
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Elementary and middle school teachers are the jobs most commonly held by women. Here are some details:

  • Total full-time female elementary and middle school teachers: 2,430,000
  • Pct. of elementary and middle school teachers that are female: 79.3%
  • Median annual earnings for full-time female workers: $56,420 (86.2% of male earnings)

Click here to read about the 25 jobs most commonly held by women.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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