Women’s Pay Is Falling Behind. Is Return to the Office to Blame?
- secbpwnz
- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
Women make workforce gains, but their pay growth isn’t keeping pace with men’s
By Harriet Torry.
Women who want work-from-home flexibility are finding it comes with a price.
October 24, 2025 - By last year, women working full time made 81 cents on the dollar compared with men, the widest pay gap since 2016, according to the Census Bureau’s latest data. And more recent numbers from the Labor Department indicate men are outpacing women this year, too, when it comes to weekly earnings growth.
Economists examining the widening gap say there are likely several factors at play, including the high cost and scarce availability of affordable child care. But their leading theory is the effort by many companies to get workers back into offices, which can prompt some women to quit, turn down promotions or opt for lower-paying jobs with more flexibility.
Women have fallen behind in the return-to-office push, reflecting the barriers they can still hit when juggling careers and families, even after decades of workplace gains.
“This traces back to gender norms in society in general that put a disproportionate share of household responsibilities and child care on women,” said Francine Blau, an economics professor at Cornell University.
By the time Jane Varble’s maternity leave for her second child ended in February, the Covid-19-era option of working remotely a couple of days a week at her St. Louis-based accounting job for the federal government had ended.
“Within two or three weeks I was, like, ‘Cannot do this,’ ” said the 34-year old, whose husband works nights in a warehouse, making daycare pickups harder. “I was crying driving to and from work because I was so exhausted.
”Varble took a government buyout this spring and now has a fully remote job at a law firm, saving her nearly two hours of daily commuting time while preserving flexibility to take her children to doctor’s appointments. “I took about a 25% pay cut, but it’s worth it,” she said.
The share of women in their prime working years, aged 25 to 54, who are working or looking for a job has stagnated this year while it increased for men, federal data show. Economists believe this reflects an overall low-hire, low-fire labor market, return-to-office mandates, plus the struggle many families have finding affordable child care.
Accounting firm KPMG found labor-force participation among women with at least a bachelor’s degree and a child up to five years old has declined 2.3 percentage points since the start of 2023. For women with no degree and no children, it has increased nearly 1 percentage point.
Over the past four decades, the gap between women’s earnings relative to men’s has largely trended in one direction: it got smaller, as women made gains in education and entered the workplace in larger numbers. By 2022, women working full time and year-round peaked at making 84 cents on the dollar compared with men, census data show.
But the next year, the ratio made its first statistically significant decline in two decades, dropping women to less than 83 cents on the dollar. Then it happened again in 2024, when men’s earnings rose 3.7% while women’s didn’t change significantly.
The census data includes people who worked at least 35 hours a week. It doesn’t account for part-time work, education levels or career choices that can steer men into jobs that might pay better.
Many men, particularly younger men, are also struggling in the current labor market. The share of men aged 25 to 34 who are working or looking for a job has increased over the past year but remains more than 3 percentage points below its recent peak in 2007.
Women make up most of the college-educated workforce, but are also overrepresented in lower-earning jobs like home health aides, cashiers and food servers. Surveys show they spend more time on household tasks like caring for children.
Gabriela Romeu, a college administrator in Miami, said hybrid work arrangements in the wake of the pandemic were perfect for her. “As a mother, as a wife, as somebody who is in a career, it felt like you almost had superpowers that you can do it all,” she said.
Then her employer called everyone back to the office full time in August. She has kept her job—Miami’s high living costs make taking a pay cut difficult—but is spending more time commuting and more money on after-hours care for her two children.
“It’s a lot for seemingly almost no reason because I was doing my job well—there really wasn’t a need necessarily for me to be fully in-person,” Romeu said.
Women are nearly three times more likely than men to leave a job at a high tech or financial firm when it introduces a return-to-office mandate, according to a recent paper led by economists at the University of Pittsburgh.
The research—which they aim to submit to a research journal soon—tracked more than three million tech and finance workers’ employment histories on LinkedIn through the end of 2023. It found departing workers were more likely to leave for a lower-ranking position after a return-to-office mandate, and the effect was more pronounced for women than men.
“Basically, they are sacrificing their career-advancement opportunities,” said Mark Ma, associate professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the paper’s authors. “That could help explain the gender pay gap.”
Tech worker Chrystina Herminiano said she has turned down two jobs since the birth of her son in 2023 that would have offered higher pay, but more time in the office. She has opted instead for fully remote roles, even though she feels overqualified.
The 38-year-old, who lives in Toronto but mainly works with U.S. clients, said she feels stuck in her career and salary progression.
“I need to balance my family life and my family commitments, but then I also want to be able to work and bring an income,” she said.
Write to Harriet Torry at harriet.torry@wsj.com