These women-dominated, high-paying jobs are growing the fastest this decade
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These women-dominated, high-paying jobs are growing the fastest this decade
After the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an exodus of women from the workforce, largely due to inaccessible child care and a heteronormative culture where women remain the default caretakers, a are now participating in the U.S. economy again. Their increased representation is a trend that's in recent months.
Over the next decade, demand for a number of women-dominated jobs paying six figures or more is forecast to rise at an above-average pace.
used data to identify the highest-paying, women-dominated jobs projected to grow the fastest over the next decade. The analysis looks at jobs where at least half of employees were women and where typical earnings were 1.5 times the median for all occupations. Those occupations were then ranked by the 10 forecast to grow the fastest.
The modern growth of women in the workforce has been propelled by a trend in women than men and the shifting makeup of formerly male-dominated fields, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
Some of the fastest-growing jobs with the highest pay for women through the next decade include those long stereotyped as "women's roles," partly because they involve elements of nurturing or caretaking. and speech-language pathology, which has historically focused on , are among them.
These fields, however, require highly skilled workers and are also projected to benefit the women working in them. The Department of Labor forecasts that they'll see outsized growth in demand in the coming years, driven by an aging population that will require more nursing care and speech therapy for older generations that .
That high demand for medical roles and others in fields like finance and business operations may contribute to even higher wage increases, just as it did for .
Even in high-paying, fast-growing fields, wage gaps persist
Other fast-growing and high-paying jobs haven't always been stereotypically associated with a mostly women workforce, and they will see high demand for the foreseeable future as women now make up most workers.
Women in , financial management, and positions have been growing as a portion of the workforce thanks to a generation of trailblazing women who embraced STEM careers, which have historically been male-dominated. Financial institutions have been compelled to diversify their workforces in recent years based, in part, on evidence that than those led by men.
Still, gender differences in pay remain a reality鈥攅ven in some of the highest-paying and fastest-growing occupations. Even women with advanced certificates and college degrees a man with the same education earns, according to a recent Census Bureau analysis of college records and earnings from 2005 to 2019.
Despite progress toward equitable representation , women still lag behind men in representation and pay in the finance industry overall. The same is true for several of the top 10 fastest-growing occupations dominated by women.
Even among nurse practitioners, where women comprise 9 in 10 workers, they still earn about 2% less than men. For women working in medical and health services management roles, the earning gap is 6% less than for men. Women physician assistants鈥攁 group projected to grow 29% by 2033鈥攅arn 8% less than their male counterparts on average.
However, there is reason to believe that the wage gap could continue to narrow. As more women enter and participate in the workforce, the , a trend that's played out globally in recent decades, according to Goldman Sachs Research.
Story editing by Alizah Salario. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Lacy Kerrick.
