According to an Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the February 3, 2012 employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job growth improved in January with 243,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls. In January, women gained 95,000 jobs (almost 40%, above their share for the past year) and men gained 148,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate remained steady from December to January for women aged 16 and older (8.3%), but fell for men (from 8.7% to 8.3%). Some of the apparent improvement for men is due to workers ending their job search and no longer being counted among the unemployed. Overall, the male civilian labor force (men aged 16 and older employed or unemployed and actively seeking work) shrank by 303,000 between December and January. While women were leaving the labor force in the last 3 months of 2011, the female labor force grew by 812,000 in January compared with December.

November and December’s job totals were revised upwards by BLS in January. The revised jobs numbers for November and December are much more favorable for men: an additional 81,000 new jobs in the 2 months for women were reported compared with an additional 448,000 new jobs for men. With these revisions, of the 809,000 total jobs gained in the last 4 months (October–January), women gained 33% (265,000) while men gained 67% (544,000).

In the last year, from January 2011 to January 2012, of the 2.1 million jobs added to payrolls, 643,000 or 31% were filled by women and 1,438,000 or 69% were filled by men. Since October of 2009, when men’s and women’s total jobs numbers were virtually equal, women have gained 545,000 jobs, whereas men have gained 2,359,000. The gap between women’s and men’s employment in January is 1.8 million.

Women have regained about one out of four (752,000 or 28%) of the total jobs they lost in the recession (2.7 million from December 2007 to the trough for women’s employment in September 2010, which occurred more than 1 year after the recession officially ended). The picture looks somewhat better for men, who have gained more than 40% (2.4 million) of the jobs they lost since December 2007 (6.0 million). Men are recovering more quickly than women, but 12.8 million workers remain unemployed as of January.

IWPR is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that also works in affiliation with the women's studies and public policy programs at The George Washington University.