Arifa Ibrahim says she’s always considered herself “very career oriented” and never thought she’d leave the workforce of her own accord. Then, she encountered the challenges of being a working mom in the U.S.
Ibrahim is one of some 455,000 women who left the workforce between January and August of 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data and reported by CNN.
In May, Ibrahim quit her job as an activity coordinator for a private preschool where she’d worked for four years, including while raising her 5-year-old son and after giving birth to her second son, now 2.
She realized what she earned on the job barely covered gas for her work commute, the $400 monthly preschool tuition for her older son (a discounted rate for employees, she says), and the estimated $1,000 monthly day care costs for her younger son, should she enroll him.
“I don’t think our system supports working mothers right now,” Ibrahim, 33, of the Chicago area, tells CNBC Make It.
Caregiving responsibilities, including the cost of child care, was the No. 1 driving factor that led women to leave the workforce voluntarily last year, according to new data from Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on women’s advancement in the workplace.
Some 42% of women who quit cited caregiving concerns as a top reason, followed by nearly 1 in 5 women (17%) reporting low pay as a contributing factor for their exit. The survey included over 200 women who left the workforce, voluntarily or not, since January 2025.
The findings signal “rollbacks in women being able to fully participate” in the workforce after incremental progress, says Sheila Brassel, a director of research at Catalyst. “Women are not opting out. Rather, they’re very literally being torn between their caregiving responsibilities and the rigid way that we continue to do work.”
Flexible work rollbacks hit working moms hard
Brassel says companies’ shifting priorities play a role. She points to the early days of the pandemic when organizations were forced to offer remote work, flexible hours, child care support and paid time off for caregiving, which helped many women stay in the workforce and later recover some Covid-era job losses.
In more recent years, however, efforts to return to office and deprioritize DEI initiatives have threatened “women’s ability to show up in their career as well as balance those caregiving needs,” Brassel says.
Ibrahim knows this first-hand: She’d first thought of quitting after the birth of her second son, but following a discussion with her boss says she was granted the ability to work from home (her job was initially 100% in-person), and the company hired an assistant to help execute her onsite plans.
That went well for about a year, Ibrahim says, until her team increased her responsibilities and in-office days.
Catalyst’s findings align with other research from the University of Kansas that showed moms of young kids are dropping out of the workforce at historic rates, and from KPMG indicating women are being pushed out by a lack of child care support and stricter return-to-office policies.
43% of women left the workforce due to layoffs
Among the women Catalyst surveyed, 57% reported they left the workforce voluntarily, while 43% were let go.
Women of color (53%) were more likely than white women (37%) to report being laid off, according to Catalyst research, highlighting the impact of job loss on a demographic more likely to be caregivers, in the federal workforce, and in front-line roles.
Ayanna Gay learned she was being laid off from her influencer engagement manager job at a nonprofit in mid-October while she was on maternity leave with her daughter, who’s now 6 months old. The nonprofit cut 20% of its staff after losing a large funder, she says.
Gay, 33, of Sanford, Florida, says her last day with the organization was at the end of November and she received three months of severance pay. “I’ve looked at the job market, and it’s actually terrible,” says Gay, who began looking for a new job in January.
That said, she says she’s “hopeful and optimistic” about finding an employer that’s supportive of working women. As a new mom, Gay says she’s prioritizing interviewing with employers that offer remote work and flexible schedules, and are “more progressive” in policies that promote work-life balance.
“I’d want employers to consider that moms have a very unique grit,” Gay adds. “I would consider myself to be more focused and intentional with my work and time management because of the new responsibilities I have.”
3 ways employers can step up
Based on the experiences reported by women who left the workforce, Brassel of Catalyst says employers can take action on three main objectives to better support and retain working women:
- Provide schedule flexibility
- Provide resources that relieve caregiving pressures, like on-site day care or paid days off
- Conduct regular audits to ensure fair pay and career growth
“Catalyst warned about a year ago about the risks of retreating from equitable workplace practices,” Brassel says. Employers that lose “specific and intentional focus” on these practices, like flexible work and fair pay, risk “weakening the systems that in many ways buoy so many folks’ careers, including women’s careers,” she says. That has a negative effect on the employers, too, she adds: “It has a direct hit to their talent pipeline and their leadership pipeline.”
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