The percentage of female employees has increased across many industries. At 13%, Construction is still low, but slowly growing.

By Manuel Gutierrez, Consulting Economist to NKBA

The number of women employed outside the home continues to rise across a wide swath of industries. Since women started re-entering the workforce in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the gender gap has narrowed significantly, even in traditionally male-dominated fields like construction.

In 1970, the split was approximately 45 million male workers and 25 million female workers, which meant that nearly two in three employees were male. The bottom of the left panel in Figure 1 shows that the gap by gender was fairly wide, with male workers dominating females by more than 20 million, starting around 1970.

The gap narrowed over time and was totally eliminated by 2010, as shown by the vertical dotted line, as more women entered the workforce.

As a percentage of the total, females accounted for just 35% of the jobs in 1970. That ratio, as seen in the right panel of Figure 1, rose sharply over the following two decades, reaching 47% by 1990. It then continued to rise, although less sharply, until it settled at 49.7% last year.

Females have taken a larger share of government jobs compared to their share within the private sector. Nearly six in ten (58%) government jobs are held by women (green line of right panel in Figure 1), while they hold 48% of private sector jobs. Fifteen percent of all jobs are within local, state or federal government, with 17.4% of females employed within those agencies.

So what is the breakout of females vs. males by industry? In Figure 2, it’s clear that two sectors dominate. Nearly eight in ten (79.1%) Health Care employees are female, with 62.8% of those employed in Education fields are also women. These two sectors include private and government/public positions.

Three purely private-sector industries are also isolated in Figure 2. Retail Trade leads with 48.6% female workers. This is followed by the Manufacturing industry, where 28.6% of workers are women. The third sector focuses on an industry closer to home, Construction, where just over 13% are women.

Despite that low percentage, Construction has shown a marked rise over the last half century, as the share of women within it has nearly doubled, from 6.8% in early 1970 to last year’s 13.3%.  However, most of those gains were achieved before 1990, when women’s share of the industry’s jobs rose by 5.4 percentage points to 12.2%. However,  only a 1.7 percentage point gain has been realized in the 30 years since.

Within the Construction sector, Specialty Trades represent 59% of jobs. The remaining 41% are in management, operations, sales, transportation and other. Women employed within Construction are more likely to have settled within the non-specialty trade arena.

As of the end of last year, there were 569,000 females working in Specialty Trades overall, accounting for 12.1% of all trade workers (Figure 3). Women’s share rose by 1.7 percentage points over the last 30 years, from 10.4% in 1990.

Overall, the percentage of females in specialty trades has changed very little in the last 30 years. Figure 3, besides showing All Trades combined, breaks out three other major trade groupings.

Building Equipment trades, which primarily includes plumbing, HVAC and electrical trades, currently is 12.8% female.

Females in Building Foundation, which includes roofing, siding, and similar work, accounts for 9.7% of its overall workers.

Jobs in Building/Finishing, like flooring, drywall installation and finish carpentry, have the highest representation of females among all specialty trades, at 13.4%.  It has also registered the most significant percentage increase of females in the last 30 years, growing 3.1 percentage points since 1990.

Table 1 below displays various statistics for specialties within each of the major trade groups shown in Figure 3 above.