Women Overtake Men in College Degrees

For more than three decades, a majority of college students in the U.S. have been women. However, it was not until this year that women made up the majority of the college-educated workforce.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in July there were 29.234 million women workers over the age of 25 with bachelor’s degrees, just slightly greater than the male total: 29.069 million.

Related: Women are working more, at home and on the job

Educated workers have been almost evenly divided by gender for many years, with the gap fluctuating in and out of women’s favor depending on economic conditions. Women already made up 45 percent of the college-educated labor force in 2000 and they made up between 48-49 percent for much of the past decade.