The stay-at-home boyfriend is now an economic trend as more women than men go to work

You probably know a woman supporting an unemployed man. Maybe you’ve been that woman. What used to be an embarrassing secret has quietly become a macroeconomic data point, and the Federal Reserve has the receipts.

As of early 2026, women held more nonfarm payroll jobs than men in the United States. This has happened twice before — briefly during the Great Recession and again just before Covid — and both times it reversed. Laura Ullrich, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of...