Recent trends in employment, earnings, and time use among college-educated married mothers

We use data from the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey to analyze trends in employment, real hourly earnings, and time use among married women with children in the United States. We find that college-educated married mothers were an anomaly in that both their employment–population ratios and their hours worked increased between 2000 and 2019. These increases contrast with declining employment–population ratios and hours worked for high school-educated married mothers, married women without children in all education groups, and for most groups of men during the same period. In addition, we document that real hourly earnings of college-educated mothers steadily increased between 2000 and 2019, unlike other demographic groups, who experienced smaller increases or stagnation in real hourly earnings.