NEW REPORT:
Migration: Millennials and the wealthy moved in. Most Vermonters stay put
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Women power Vermont’s social services
Jobs Brief
|Jobs, Workers, Wages, Gender
The news this Women’s History Month is that women and men share an equal presence in the Vermont workforce. But the workforce is highly segregated by sex. Both men and women work in occupations where one sex accounts for at least two-thirds of the workers.
Many of the state’s social services, such as education and healthcare, rely on women’s labor. Women fill roughly three-quarters of Vermont’s more than 28,000 jobs in educational instruction, including tutors, librarians, teaching assistants, and teachers at all education levels. They represent a similar share of jobs in healthcare, office and administration, and social services occupations, including counseling, social work, and therapy.
Among all jobs, healthcare support roles—nursing assistants, home health aides, and dental and medical assistants, for example—have the largest share of women: four out of five workers. For male-dominated sectors, segregation by sex is even starker. Men make up more than 90 percent of the workforce in transportation, construction, and installation, maintenance, and repair.
Aside from different occupations, men and women in Vermont also receive different pay: Women make 88 cents for every dollar a man makes.
This month
The number of employed workers in Vermont fell in February after 57 consecutive months of growth and a record-breaking high in January 2025. The last time employment decreased was in April 2020, after the Covid-19 pandemic struck the state. Because the pandemic was an extraordinary circumstance, that decline was 100 times greater than the one in February of this year.
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