Why 94% of New Jobs Went to Women—and What That Means for Boys in School
The last day of basketball camp, I was sitting in the bleachers with another mom, watching the boys run through a shooting drill. She was telling me about her son’s reading log. “He’s supposed to read twenty minutes a night. He sits there and stares at the page. Then he tells me every player in the NBA draft, every college they came from, their free throw percentages. But the book? ‘Too boring.’”
I nodded because I’d seen it a hundred times in my classroom. Boys who could memorize an entire esports strategy guide but couldn’t finish a chapter of their assigned novel. Boys who could argue about trade rules but wouldn’t write a paragraph about theme. It wasn’t ability. It was something else.
A few days later, I saw a headline about the job market. Between March 25 and July 26, the economy added about 350,000 jobs, and 94% of them went to women. I read it twice. I’m not an economist, but I’m a teacher, and I know what those numbers look like from the other end. The jobs that grew were in health care, education, administrative work—jobs that require punctuality, reading, writing, sitting in a chair, getting along with people. And the boys I teach? Many are still sitting in chairs, but their heads are somewhere else.
This is the part that doesn’t get talked about enough. Everyone has an opinion on the economy, but almost no one is asking why boys are disconnecting from school. Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, more likely to be suspended, less likely to go to college, and now less likely to land the new jobs being created. “End of American civilization” is usually said as a joke. In my classroom, it looks less like a disaster and more like a quiet separation. A boy starts to believe school is not for him. Then he stops trying.
I’ve been teaching English for more than a decade. Remote school was especially hard on boys. There were no recesses, no walking between classes, no ball games at lunch. Everything was on a screen. Kids who could sit at a kitchen table and sustain attention through a book did okay. Kids who needed to pace, tap pencils, or ask questions in the physical presence of someone else fell behind. Many still haven’t come back.
I’m not saying all boys are the same. Plenty of girls are struggling too. But every class period, I see a pattern: boys who are not reading, writing, or doing homework, and who have learned to call it boring. They don’t see themselves in the assignments. They don’t see a purpose. They don’t see a future version of themselves sitting at a desk sending emails. They want to build something, move something, fix something, compete with someone. The economy isn’t offering that, and neither is the school day.
So what can a parent or teacher actually do? I don’t have a grand strategy, but I have some things that work in the messy middle of real life.
First, stop treating “I’m bored” as an attitude problem. Boredom is often frustration. It means “I don’t know how to do this, so I’m checking out.” Try saying, “Let’s do the first three math problems together. Then you can shoot hoops and finish the rest.” It sounds too simple, but it works. Once they start, the energy comes.
Second, let boys read what they want. My rule is that reading counts as reading. Sports statistics count. Graphic novels count. A biography of a skateboarder counts. If a boy finishes a book about a video game character and can tell you why that character matters, that’s more learning than forcing him through a novel he resents. Assign novels later, once he trusts that books hold things he cares about.
Third, use competition for writing. This one surprises parents. I sometimes set a timer and say, “Let’s see who can write a clear, five-sentence paragraph about this article in under six minutes. Use one quote, no fluff.” The room gets suddenly quiet. Boys who stared at blank pages for twenty minutes start typing. It’s not because they love writing. It’s because there’s a challenge and an endpoint. The quality of the thinking is the same, just structured differently.
Fourth, at home, ask different questions. “How was school?” gets “Fine.” But “What was the hardest thing you had to do today?” gets a real answer. Or “What’s something you learned that your teacher didn’t expect anyone to learn?” That opens the door for the kid who wants to tell you about the Civil War reenactment he watched on YouTube, even if it wasn’t on the syllabus. That’s not lost time. That’s him building the habit of paying attention.
We should also rethink “boys will be boys.” There’s a difference between accepting a boy’s nature and giving up. I’ve heard parents say, “He’s not into school. He’s more of a hands-on learner.” That phrase is often a kind way of saying “we’ve stopped challenging him academically.” Boys need movement and practical application. They still need rigorous thinking, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. We just have to deliver those things in a way that feels less like sitting still and more like making progress.
What are politicians doing about this? Not much. There are debates about job training and community college and infrastructure spending. But nobody talks about the fact that by tenth grade, many boys have already decided school isn’t a place where they can succeed. No policy fixes that if we haven’t addressed the daily experience. We could fund more career and technical education. We could also make sure recess isn’t taken away as punishment, or let middle schoolers read books that don’t have a girl with a horse or an old man with a boat on the cover. Small things matter.
I don’t know if the job numbers will change anytime soon. I don’t have a neat answer for what the end of American civilization would look like, or if this is really that. But I do know that when I ask ninth graders what they did over the summer, the boys who say “nothing” are often the ones who spent hours on YouTube learning to fix a lawnmower engine or mastering Minecraft height maps. They didn’t do nothing. They just don’t think it counts.
And that’s what gets to me. They don’t see how their curiosity could become a job, a skill, a future. We can’t single-handedly fix the labor market. But we can tell them, through the way we talk and through what we let them read and write about, that their interests are not a distraction. They’re the starting point.
There’s no perfect ending. I still have students who would rather stare out the window than open a notebook. I still have parents who are exhausted. But I’ve also seen a boy pass a history test because he drew a comic strip of the battle instead of writing an essay. I’ve seen another read an entire book about weather because his teacher put it on his desk and said, “Just try the first page.” Small moments like that aren’t rocket science. They’re just noticing that a kid is more likely to become who he’s trying to be if we meet him halfway.
Maybe that’s the real job.
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