It's Labor Day, so of course, we'll talk about Labor, but it's also National

Macadamian that day, so we got to talk about that too. From American Public

Media, this is Marketplace.

In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab and for Chi-Ristall. It's Monday, September 4th.

Thanks for listening. Today is a day as good as any to zoom in on the labor.

Specifically, the labor force. One highlight of the August jobs report, as we

told you on Friday, was the labor force participation rate. That's the share of

people working or looking for work. It rose to its highest level since the

pandemic began more than three years ago. And this is an important piece of

data to watch because it is a key component to the Fed pulling off a soft

landing. More workers take pressure off rising wages. In August, gains in the

labor force were largely driven by a group of workers whose participation

suffered during the pandemic. Women. Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino has more.

Historically, women have participated in the labor force at lower rates than men,

but in August, the gap shrank to just 10 and a half percentage points. The

narrowest it's ever been. Men's labor force participation has been growing,

but women's has been growing by just a tiny bit more. Betsy Stevenson, an

economist at the University of Michigan, says that's been a happy surprise

because job losses and disruptions during the pandemic hit women workers

much harder. A lot of people myself included were really worried that the

pandemic would knock these women off course and we would take decades to get

back to where we were in 2019. Women's overall labor force participation isn't

...