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Thursday, June 27, 2019

For Oregon Parents, Working Is the Norm

Oregon’s civilian labor force includes 697,000 parents of children under 18. Working parents account for one-third of the state labor force, a similar percentage to the nation (32%). Parents of children under six years of age make up 14 percent of the state workforce, and those with children ages six to 17 years account for another 19 percent.

Parents are more likely to be working than people without children under 18. The participation rate for the Oregon population with no children under 18 is 54.5 percent, compared with 84.0 percent of parents with children under 18. This likely reflects an aging population and an increasing number of retired people. Participation for teens and young adults has also been lower in recent years than in decades past.

Labor force participation of parents differs by gender and the age of children. For parents of children under six years of age, there’s a big difference in the labor force experiences of men versus women. Of the men in this group, 93.1 percent are in the labor force, compared with 67.0 percent of Oregon mothers of children under age six. Oregon fathers in this group are slightly less likely to be in the labor force than the national average, and Oregon mothers of children under age six are slightly more likely to be in the labor force than the national average.

The gender gap in labor force participation is reduced somewhat for parents of children ages six to 17. For men with children ages six to 17, the participation rate was 93.7 percent in 2018, and 83.3 percent of Oregon women with children in that age range were in the labor force. The participation rate of men with children ages six to 17 is slightly above the national rate (92.2%). Oregon women’s participation rate is nearly 7 percentage points above the national rate of 76.4 percent for women with children ages six to 17.

For people without children under 18, the genders behave far more similarly in their likelihood of labor force participation. Men in this group had a participation rate of 58.3 percent compared with the women’s participation rate of 50.7 percent.


To learn more, read employment economist Jessica Nelson's full article here.

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