Amid soaring child care costs and mounting pressures at home, the number of mothers with young children leaving the US workforce has hit a 40-year high, a new study suggests. According to a University of Kansas analysis of federal labor data, over 400,000 women stepped away from their jobs in the first half of 2025. CBS News describes the sharpest decline in more than four decades for mothers of young children. Data show 66.4% of women with children under the age of 6 in the workforce as of August, a year-over-year drop of nearly 2 percentage points, per USA Today. Two examples:
- Mackenzie Bruegge, an Iowa mother who earned about $1,000 every two weeks in medical billing, discovered child care costs for her 3-year-old and newborn "would just cancel out my check," she tells CBS. After struggling to work from home while caring for the kids, Bruegge, together with her husband, decided to get by on his plumber income alone, despite the financial strain. It's a financial dilemma familiar to many parents.
- "I feel like, a lot of women, we're educated, and we have the ability to work, and we want to contribute to the workforce," Georgia's Miya Walker, a 25-year-old mother of a toddler, tells USA Today. "It's just, you know, circumstances. It doesn't make it sustainable."
Economist Misty Heggeness, who led the study, points to child care costs as the primary reason mothers are leaving the workforce. She notes that the lack of robust policies supporting caregivers forces many women into difficult decisions, often prioritizing their children over their careers when the system offers few viable alternatives.
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