Number of Career-Interrupted Mothers Decreases
Proportion Drops by 1.4 Percentage Points
According to the "2025 Regional Employment Survey - Employment Status of Married Women" released by the National Data Agency on November 20, the number of married women aged 15 to 54 in the first half of the year was 7,403,000, accounting for 56.3% of all women in that age group.
Among married women aged 15 to 54, 4,984,000 were employed. Of these, 2,669,000 lived with children under the age of 18, and their employment rate was 64.3%, up 1.9 percentage points from the same period last year. This is the highest figure since related statistics began to be compiled in 2016. The employment rate for this group has continued to rise since 2020, when it stood at 55.5%.
With the increase in working mothers, the number of married women who have experienced career interruptions is decreasing. Among married women aged 15 to 54, the number of women with career interruptions fell by 110,000 to 1,105,000. The proportion of married women in this age group who experienced career interruptions dropped by 1.0 percentage point to 14.9%, the lowest figure since the survey began in 2014.
The number of women with career interruptions living with children under the age of 18 was 885,000, a decrease of 85,000. Among married women living with children under 18, the proportion of those with career interruptions fell by 1.4 percentage points to 21.3%. The data showed that the proportion of women with career interruptions was higher among those with more children or younger children.
The main reasons cited by women with career interruptions for leaving their jobs were childcare (44.3%), marriage (24.2%), pregnancy and childbirth (22.1%), family care (5.1%), and children's education (4.3%). Among them, 42.1% had experienced a career interruption of more than 10 years.
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