Too few women in the labor market? Four out of five women of working age are already participating in the labor market.

The labor force participation rate indicates the proportion of the labor force – that is, employed and unemployed persons according to the definition of the International Labour Organization (ILO) – in the corresponding reference population, with each employed woman fully counted in the statistics regardless of the degree of employment. A detailed look by age groups shows: While the labor force participation rate of women aged 15 to 24 slightly decreased from 66% to 64% (-1.4 percentage points), it increased significantly in all other age groups. Among those aged 25 to 39, it rose from 78.6% to 87.7% (+9.1 percentage points), among those aged 40 to 54 from 77.3% to 87.5% (+10.2 percentage points), and especially strongly among those aged 55 to 64: from 51.3% to 71.9%, which corresponds to an increase of 20.6 percentage points. In the same period, the labor force participation rate of men of working age slightly declined – from 89.4% in 2000 to 87.4% in 2024.