Employment rates of women, by age of youngest child

More mothers entered the labour market over the years

• Employment rates among mothers aged 15 to 54 with young children are lower than the rates for mothers of the same age with school-aged kids. Over the past three decades, there were strong increases in the employment rates among these two groups of mothers, especially in the late 1970s and in the 1980s. Mothers with children under the age of 6 have seen their employment rate double since 1976, from 31.5% to 65.7% in 2003, and the employment rate of mothers with children aged 6 to 15 increased from 47.1% to 76.8% during the same period.
• The employment rate among women aged 15 to 54 years without children under 16 at home has been higher than that of women with school-aged children for the past three decades. However, the rates have been converging since the 1990s and, in 2003, were only 1.7 percentage points apart (78.5% versus 76.8%).
• Although single mothers had the highest employment rates among mothers aged 15 to 54 with children under the age of 16 in the late 1970s, mothers with employed husbands gained momentum at the start of the 1980s and surpassed single mothers in 1983. Mothers with employed husbands saw consistent growth in their employment rate from 1976 (39.3%) through to 2003 (74.4%). The employment rate of single mothers, on the other hand, fluctuated from 48.9% in 1976 to 55.3% in 1997, with significant declines during the recessionary years. But since 1997, the employment rate for single mothers rose quickly to reach 68.2% in 2003.

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