Women are entering the job market at rapidly rising rates, a new study finds.
The team at U.S. investment data firm Ned Davis Research found that “female participation in the prime-age labor force has soared all over the world,” at a rate that far outclips men’s.
The shift was especially notable in Australia, where women’s job-market participation went up by 3.25% last year, while men’s remained largely stagnant, only rising 0.25%. Women also took significant professional strides in the U.S., Japan, Italy, South Korea and Germany, NDR found.
And Millennial women are leading the charge, researchers added, with their comparatively higher levels of education giving them a leg up. “The unemployment rate tends to be lower among people with higher education, which helps explain the greater take-up of women in the workforce,” NDR chief economist Alejandra Grindal told Fortune. “People with greater education are also more likely to have full-time jobs and to be employed productively.”
Their “participation should have positive implications for the economy and equities in the long-term,” the team wrote of this group of women in its study summary.
One major reason for this shift in economic activity? The rise in hybrid and remote work arrangements, which offer women unprecedented levels of flexibility. And as the world’s primary caregivers, such wiggle room makes a significant difference for women.
With their salaries, women are spending more, too – in the U.S., for example, women spend roughly $1,000 and $2,000 more per year than men do, increasing projected gross domestic product (GDP), or the monetary measure of a given region’s goods and services, by 3%. The team at NDR saw that pattern replicated in numerous other countries, including India and Egypt, where the GDP would jump 40% and 50% respectively, should spending trends persist.
It’s not just that they’re buying more. Women also tend to spend in ways that invest in their individual futures, and our collective future, researchers noted. “Single women are more likely to own a home … with homeownership at 40%, vs. males at 36%,” Grindal said to Fortune, adding that women are also more likely to make home-related purchases than men are.
And, she adds, women also have “a greater tendency to spend money on educating their children, which leads to more productive generations down the road.”
