The American dream becomes more and more difficult for many women who leave American workforceas new data highlights continued healthcare cost pressures.
As rising child care and elder care costs outpace wage growth, 455,000 women left the workforce between January and August 2025, according to Catalyst, many citing difficult tradeoffs between a salary and the high price of professional care.
A recent report of the research group showed that nearly half a million female employees voluntarily left their jobs for various reasons. Forty-two percent cited leaving due to caregiving responsibilities, 37% cited a lack of schedule flexibility, while a smaller percentage of respondents cited issues with salary dissatisfaction or job market uncertainty.
If businesses and government don’t address healthcare infrastructure, a Catalyst executive warns, the United States could face a long-term labor shortage that could drive up the costs of services.
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“This moment is particularly risky. We are at the tip of this spear, and we can still do something,” Jennifer McCollum, president and CEO of Catalyst, said at WTOP in Washington, DC. “When women are leaving the corporate world in droves, or the government world, or the NGO and nonprofit world, as we’re seeing now, and you combine that with fewer leaders wanting to talk about it openly…we create the conditions for a labor market crisis.”
U.S. federal workers and other job seekers line up to attend a job fair in Silver Spring, Maryland, April 16, 2025. (Getty Images)
“This research clearly shows that women’s departure from the workforce is not due to a lack of ambition or commitment,” McCollum said in the report. “They reflect the reality that too many jobs still fail to take into account caring responsibilities and economic pressures. If we want to understand why women leave, we need to examine how work continues to be structured.”
A November 2025 LendingTree study found that in 100 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, the average monthly cost of infant care is 25.3% lower than the cost of rent for a two-bedroom apartment. For families with both an infant and a toddler, child care costs are 31.5% higher than rent..
Federal data from