May 09, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Women of Generation X in the labor force

Women who were 25 to 34 years old in 2000 had a markedly different relationship to the labor market than did their counterparts in the 1970s.

[Chart data—TXT]

Among the differences between young women in the 1970s and in 2000:

• About three-quarters of women aged 25-34 participated in the labor force in the year 2000, compared with a little more than half in 1975.
• Young women today are more highly educated than were their counterparts in 1975; in 2000, 30 percent of women 25-34 years old had completed 4 or more years of college, compared with 18 percent in 1975.
• Young women have substantially closed the earnings gap with young men since 1979 (the first year for which comparable data are available); they earned 82 percent as much as men in 2000 for full-time work, compared with 68 percent in 1979.

These data are a product of the Current Population Survey. For more information, see "The labor force experience of women from ‘Generation X’," by Marisa DiNatale and Stephanie Boraas, Monthly Labor Review, March 2002.