Over 47 percent of all adult women in the United States now work outside the home, and the numbers are rising rapidly. Women account for about 40 percent of the U.S. labor force. In 1976 alone, a large new group of 1.5 million women went out and found a job.

This flood of women into the job market has surprised economists and Labor Department forecasters. They have called it “extraordinary,” and “the single most outstanding phenomenon of our century.” It was not expected that women would account for over 40 percent of the labor force, at least not until 1985.

The wartime period of record numbers of workingwomen​—some 37 percent of all women—​was replaced by the highest marriage and birth rate in the twentieth century. But beginning around 1950, the number of workingwomen began to rise again, and by 1962 it was back up to 36 percent, just short of the record World War II level; and now, at over 47 percent, it continues to soar.