More Americans are opting to earn a paycheck rather than staying home to care for family members, and it's helped to arrest a long-run decline in the nation's labor force participation rate.
The U.S. labor market participation rate has flat-lined over the past year, a trend that comes partly as people choose to work rather than stay home to care for family members, according to a new analysis on the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank's Macroblog.
Between the first quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017, the share of people working or looking rose slightly even though demographic trends suggested it should have dropped by 0.14 percentage points. That change came as fewer adults — and fewer women, in particular — opted out of work to care for children or the elderly.
While the Atlanta Fed post doesn't dig into why that's happening, it could be that a strong labor market is enticing workers to get back in the game. Monetary policy makers have long hoped that their patience in raising rates would help the job market tighten to the point where workers would come back from the sidelines.
© Copyright 2026 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.