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- It's tough to be a job-seeking mom with young children, and some may choose to leave the workforce.
- Labor force participation has dropped for women with children under age 5.
- Return-to-office pushes and childcare issues are two major factors.
When Fatema Ali was laid off from her IBM project manager job in 2024, one of her biggest concerns was how she and her husband would support their three children, the youngest of whom was 8 months old.
She hoped to find another job quickly. But she's still looking for full-time work.
A few months earlier, her husband had left his job to pursue a startup idea that wasn't yet generating income.
"I didn't want that pressure to show on my face," said Ali, who's in her 30s and lives in Texas. "I don't want my children to feel like there is anything wrong."
The past few years have been especially challenging for job-seeking moms with young children. As hiring has remained low, return-to-office pushes and ongoing childcare challenges have made it harder for some mothers to find jobs and stay in the workforce.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, described the situation as a "mom-cession," based on an analysis of job-market data by Matthew Nestler, a senior economist at KPMG. Nestler found that unemployment of college-educated women with at least one child under age 5 has increased, while their employment-to-population ratio dropped.
Nestler doesn't see the situation improving soon, as employers have been calling people back to the office, and childcare remains expensive or hard to get.
"It's really heartbreaking because we're in a moment of time, coming out of the pandemic, where women are experiencing record gains in the American labor force," Long said. "So it's particularly tough to watch moms of young kids unable to find opportunities at this moment, that this should be a boon for all American women."
The pressures on working moms
Nestler found labor force participation among college-educated women whose youngest child is under 5 has declined from December 2023 to May 2026. He said this group of women disproportionately benefited from increased pandemic-era flexible work arrangements, which were common in white-collar jobs. Meanwhile, participation has increased for women without children and for most groups of men.
Two big factors are making it harder for parents to stay in the workforce: Return-to-office mandates and the difficulty of finding affordable childcare. Casey Peeks, the senior director of Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress, previously told Business Insider that almost half of young children in the US live somewhere without sufficient licensed childcare. "Childcare is too expensive, but it's also really hard to find," Peeks said.
A pandemic-era program in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act helped childcare providers with wages, rent, and other costs. Nestler said the end of those funds in late 2023 led to a flattening of childcare employment.
"The dramatic expansion, especially of college-educated moms of young children's participation and employment coming out of the pandemic, overlapped directly with that recovery in the childcare sector," Nestler said.
For mothers balancing childcare responsibilities, return-to-office mandates have narrowed the pool of jobs that fit their needs. An analysis by staffing firm Robert Half found that just 4% of new job postings in the first quarter of 2026 were fully remote, compared with 19% that were hybrid and 77% that were fully on-site.
Moms with elementary-school-aged children are also having a difficult time. Prime-age women with at least a bachelor's degree whose youngest child is between 5 and 12 have seen labor force participation cool a little. "When the workday and calendar do not align with the school day and calendar, there's going to be more stress there," Nestler said. Meanwhile, the rate for college-educated women with a teenager as their youngest child has increased.
What can be done
Long said a loss of workplace flexibility has been brutal for moms and that there needs to be a middle-ground compromise between staff who want to work from home and CEOs who want workers back at office desks.
A Pew Research Center survey of US working parents in March found that 71% of those not self-employed said flexibility to work from home when needed would be very or extremely helpful to them, but only 23% said this flexibility is available to them.
Even with the benefit of remote work, parents still face challenges. About half of parents working from home most or all of the time told Pew it's difficult to balance work and family life, and said being employed makes it harder to be a good parent.
The survey also showed parents want access to childcare at work. "A majority (59%) of working parents with children 5 or younger — including 68% of working moms with a kid in this age group — say it would be extremely or very helpful to have onsite childcare at their workplace," Pew said. "But just 7% say this is available to them."
The US can also look to other countries' offerings. "The United States used to be a leader in women in the workforce, and we really fell behind for many years in the past decade, and countries like Japan and Canada surged ahead of us," Long said, adding that the solution was investing in subsidized childcare. For now, though, many US parents are left to navigate those challenges on their own.
Over time, Ali's husband returned to the workforce, easing the financial pressure on the family. As her children have gotten older, Ali said she's been able to devote more time to her career, splitting her efforts between her job search and a different startup opportunity she launched with her husband.
"Being unemployed hasn't felt like much of a break," she said. "When you're dealing with financial uncertainty, caring for children, looking for work, and trying to build something new, your mind is always racing."
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