March 28, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Both spouses work in most married-couple families

The proportion of married-couple families in which both the husband and wife were employed edged up over the year to 53.2 percent in 2000. The proportion of all married-couple families in which only the husband worked was 19.2 percent in 2000, about the same as the year before.

[Chart data—TXT]

Both parents were employed in 64.2 percent of married-couple families with children under 18, while the father, but not the mother, was employed in 29.2 percent of these families. Both proportions were about unchanged from a year earlier and have shown little change since 1994.

The proportion of "traditional" families, that is, families in which the father, but not the mother, is employed, is much larger among couples with preschool children (under 6 years of age) than among families whose youngest child was 6 to 17 years old.

These data are a product of the Current Population Survey. Learn more in "Employment Characteristics of Families in 2000" news release USDL 01-103.