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Happy Mother’s Day from BLS: working mothers in 2012

May 10, 2013

The labor force participation rate—the percentage of the population working or looking for work—for all mothers with children under age 18 was 70.5 percent in 2012, little different from the prior year.

Chart Image
Chart Data

Employment status of mothers with own children under 18 years by age of youngest child, 2012 annual averages
Characteristic	With own children under 18 years		With own children 6–17 years, none younger		With own children under 6 years		With own children under 3 years		With own children 2 years		With own children 1 year		With own children under 1 year
Characteristic	Number	Percent	Number	Percent	Number	Percent	Number	Percent	Number	Percent	Number	Percent	Number	Percent
Civilian noninstitutional population	35,907,000	100.0	19,814,000	100.0	16,094,000	100.0	9,134,000	100.0	2,829,000	100.0	3,256,000	100.0	3,049,000	100.0
Labor force (employed plus unemployed)	25,314,000	70.5	14,887,000	75.1	10,427,000	64.8	5,612,000	61.4	1,832,000	64.7	2,044,000	62.8	1,737,000	57.0
Total employed	23,207,000	64.6	13,801,000	69.7	9,406,000	58.4	5,047,000	55.3	1,656,000	58.6	1,845,000	56.7	1,546,000	50.7
Employed full time	17,323,000	48.2	10,602,000	53.5	6,721,000	41.8	3,552,000	38.9	1,177,000	41.6	1,272,000	39.1	1,102,000	36.1
Employed part time	5,883,000	16.4	3,199,000	16.1	2,684,000	16.7	1,495,000	16.4	479,000	16.9	572,000	17.6	444,000	14.6
Unemployed (1)	2,108,000	5.9	1,086,000	5.5	1,021,000	6.3	564,000	6.2	175,000	6.2	199,000	6.1	190,000	6.2
Not in the labor force	10,593,000	29.5	4,927,000	24.9	5,666,000	35.2	3,522,000	38.6	998,000	35.3	1,212,000	37.2	1,312,000	43.0
Footnotes: (1) The percent of mothers that are unemployed, as displayed here, does not represent the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed persons as a percent of the labor force.

Mothers with younger children are less likely to be in the labor force than mothers with older children. In 2012, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under 6 years old (64.8 percent) was lower than the rate of those whose youngest child was 6 to 17 years old (75.1 percent). The participation rate of mothers with infants under a year old was 57.0 percent.

Among employed mothers, those with preschoolers are more likely to work part time than are mothers with children ages 6 to 17. About 29 percent of employed mothers with children under age 6 worked part time in 2012, compared with 23 percent of employed mothers with children ages 6 to 17.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. For more information, see "Employment Characteristics of Families – 2012" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL‑13‑0730. Full-time workers are those who usually work 35 hours or more per week; part-time workers are those who usually work fewer than 35 hours per week.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Happy Mother’s Day from BLS: working mothers in 2012 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2013/ted_20130510.htm (visited April 16, 2024).

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