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Thursday, March 22, 2018

Breaking the Mold: Nontraditional Jobs for Women

The Department of Labor Women’s Bureau categorizes occupations into traditional and nontraditional based on the percentage of women employed in those occupations. Traditional or female-dominated occupations are those in which women make up 75 percent or more of the total employed in that occupation. Nontraditional or male-dominated occupations are those in which women represent 25 percent or less of total employment. According to data from the American Community Survey, 47 percent of Oregon’s employment was in occupations dominated by one gender in 2016. Thirty-nine percent of employed women worked in a traditional occupation, while just 5 percent worked in a nontraditional occupation.

Many of the most gender-segregated occupations made up a relatively small portion of Oregon’s total employment, but both traditional and nontraditional jobs made it into the top 10 occupations by employment in 2016. For traditional occupations, secretaries and administrative assistants had the highest employment with more than 48,000 employed, 95 percent of which were women. Other popular traditional occupations in Oregon include teaching, nursing, childcare, and social work. On the nontraditional side, driver/sales workers and truck drivers had the highest employment at nearly 53,000 employed, just 9 percent of whom were women. Production and construction-related occupations and software development are other nontraditional occupations with high employment in Oregon.
To learn more about nontraditional jobs, read the full article written by workforce analyst Emily Starbuck

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