94% of New Jobs Went to Women—Why Boys Are Struggling in School and What Parents Can Do
At the parent-teacher conference in late September, a dad sat down in the small plastic chair across from me and said, “He’s smart, but he just doesn’t apply himself.” His son, a seventh grader, was doing okay in math, middling in science, and barely passing English. I tried to explain that the boy engaged well in class discussion and had a strong sense of humor. The dad wasn’t having it. He shook his head and said, “At this rate, he’s going to live in my basement until he’s forty.”
I’ve heard some version of that from parents many times over the years. Usually I nod and reassure them. But this year, something else stuck with me. A week before that conference, I had seen the latest job report. Between March 25 and July 26, about 350,000 new jobs were added in the country. Around 94 percent of those jobs went to women. For men, the number of new jobs was staggeringly small.
It’s a statistic that could easily become a political weapon. But sitting in that classroom, looking at the dad across the table, it didn’t feel like a culture war talking point. It felt like a warning.
The labor market has been shifting away from manufacturing and heavy industry for decades. The fastest-growing jobs now involve care, communication, education, health services, and technical work that often requires some post-secondary training. These are not jobs that belong to one gender, but they are jobs that require skills many boys are not being prepared for. In my classroom, I can see why.
Take a typical group project. Four students, two boys, two girls. The girls usually pull out a shared document, assign roles, and start dividing the work. The boys often wait to be told what to do. Sometimes one boy will build the slideshow and another will draw a model, but the planning, the reading, the follow-up—that usually falls on the girls. It’s not because the boys are lazy. It’s that they haven’t practiced those skills as much. By the time they reach middle school, many boys have quietly decided that school is a place where things happen to them, not a place where they make things happen.
So when I read that 94 percent of new jobs went to women, I didn’t think about economics. I thought about the boys who finish their work early and then say, “What do I do now?” while the girls ask, “Can I start on the next unit?”
No politician has come into my classroom to talk about that. The debates at the state capitol are usually about test scores, book bans, and school choice. Nobody is talking about the boy who can’t see a place for himself in a world where the strongest job growth is in fields he’s never considered.
One small thing I’ve started doing is asking a different question before each unit. Instead of “Why do I need this?” I ask, “Who in real life uses this?” The answer doesn’t have to be a college degree. A plumber uses fractions to measure pipe. A dental hygienist writes notes about patients. A store manager uses spreadsheets. When we talk about jobs in class, I make sure to say the word “job” a lot. Because many kids—especially boys—hear “college” and shut down. They don’t know what college is for. But they do know what work is.
At home, parents can do the same. Show your kids what you actually do all day. If you work in an office, show them a spreadsheet you helped create. If you install flooring, show them how you measure a room. If you’re not sure how to start a conversation, try saying, “I had to solve a problem at work today. Here was the problem, here’s what I did, and here’s what I’d do differently.” That’s a small moment, but it gives kids a picture of what adults actually do. That picture matters more than any “You need to get good grades” speech.
Another thing that helps is reading. Many boys who resist reading aren’t resisting stories. They’re resisting sitting still for thirty minutes. A lot of parents tell me their son “hates books.” Then I ask what he reads on his phone. Sometimes it’s sports stats. Sometimes it’s Minecraft guides. Sometimes it’s weird encyclopedia articles. That still counts. Reading is reading. In my classroom, I now have a shelf of “not official” reading materials: car repair books, biographies of athletes, true crime for older kids, survival guides, and comic books. One boy who almost failed English last year read an entire book about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. He didn’t call it a book. He called it “the thing with the pictures.” He could tell you more about caissons than I could.
There’s also something to be said for letting boys make mistakes while the consequences are still small. I have seen too many parents rescue their sons at the first sign of trouble. They call the teacher, e-mail the counselor, or bring the forgotten homework to the office. It comes from love. But it teaches a boy that someone will always catch him. The labor market doesn’t work that way. Neither does life.
Try letting him miss a deadline once. Let him get the bad grade, then help him figure out, after the fact, what he would do differently. It’s hard to watch. But it’s better to practice failing in seventh grade than to learn it at thirty, when rent is due.
I know some people look at that job statistic and see a reason to panic. I don’t think it’s the end of American civilization. But I do think it’s a signal that we need to change how we talk to boys about the future. We need them to know that “being good with your hands” is not a personality trait. It’s a place to start. We need them to know that caring for other people is real work. We need them to know that reading, writing, and communicating are not just school tasks. They are the tools of almost every job that pays enough to leave the basement.
I don’t know if the numbers will balance out next month or next year. I don’t know what legislators will debate next. But I do know that the dad at that conference looked at his son’s grades and saw a future he didn’t like. I saw a kid who hadn’t been shown the right entry point yet.
A few days ago, that same boy was standing by the classroom door before the bell, holding a workbook we didn’t assign. It was about plane engines. He told me he got it from his grandfather. He said, “I’m not going to college, but I might do this.” I didn’t argue with him. I just said, “Okay. Then learn to read the manual.” He nodded like that made sense. Maybe it did.
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