The Female Labor Force: A Tremendous Opportunity in the Current War for Talent

With baby boomers retiring faster than you can say millennial, the US labor force has some increasingly big shoes to fill. Hundreds of thousands of them, to be exact.

Industries such as manufacturing, construction and automotive are losing workers at a quicker rate than they’re able to hire. In search of answers, companies are tapping into new sources for talent. One of these sources is women.

Although women’s participation in the labor force was on the rise until the 1990s, it has declined in recent years. The challenges that come with encouraging women to join the labor force run deep. Issues ranging from sexual harassment, to wage imbalances, to lack of paid maternity leave currently plague women who have already entered these industries. It’s no wonder that women remain drastically underrepresented in the labor force and make up the highest percentage of workers in the low wage bracket.

However, where there’s a problem, there’s also an opportunity. Women are a valuable, largely untapped source for the labor market.

If addressed properly, the low participation of women in the labor force can be reversed and transformed into major benefits for industries, companies and the US economy as a whole.

The most obvious benefit of more women in the labor force is that they can help close the skills gap for industries facing a worker shortage.

Digging further into benefits, however, we see from research released in 2018 by Amanda Weinstein that organizations who hire more women also increase productivity. This might be due to the fact that women automatically increase the qualified pool of applicants for specific jobs, or are able to provide a unique set of skills and perspectives that men cannot.

Hiring more women also means that companies can better represent their clientele; with women now making up the majority household decisions and consumer spending, this is a segment no one can afford to ignore.

We can learn from other parts of the world about how to better attract women to the labor force.

Data from countries in both Europe and Asia has illuminated important patterns in the way women enter and leave the labor force.

In Japan, for example, women with a high school education or less participate in the labor force at much higher rates. This highlights a necessity for new policies in education and training that specifically target this age group. Data from Japan also suggests that paid parental leave policies, better childcare and flexible work schedules may help women remain in the labor force during their childbearing years.

Interestingly, if the US had matched Japan in the number of women in the workforce between 2000 and 2016, GDP could have been 4 percent higher than what it was. That’s as good as any indication that bringing more women into the workforce can yield monumental gains for the economy as a whole.

At the company level, recruiting that is geared specifically towards women should be a vital part of HR. Hiring managers can cover a lot of ground with just a few small adjustments to existing strategies.

Using other countries as a model, and taking into account the current issues plaguing women in the US labor force, we can make great strides towards recruiting more women while helping fill those big shoes left by retiring baby boomers.

It all starts with providing better training programs for women early on. Recruiters for blue-collar industries should be ever-present in high schools and community colleges, offering apprenticeships and support for women who could potentially enter the workforce. Making your company visible at this stage puts you at an advantage, and also helps to change specific social norms that would otherwise prevent women from entering certain fields.

Next, it’s important to offer ample benefits including maternity leave, paid childcare and flexible schedules. Without these policies in place, women may be deterred from taking otherwise excellent opportunities. Sweden’s female labor force participation rate was 70% in 2016, and this is largely attributed to the country’s subsidized childcare and paid parental leave.

Finally, be sure to close the wage gap at your company. Encouraging women to join the labor force also means making it an equal opportunity landscape. In order to achieve this, ensure you are not leaving anyone behind with your provided salaries.

With millennial women currently dominating the general job market, now is the time to bring them into the labor force, too.

Women are currently entering the job market in droves, delaying having children in favor of obtaining college degrees. By developing strategies to recruit more in trade and positions, industries in dire need of labor can tap into a great source of talent — and likely help boost the US economy in the process.