After dipping slightly the month prior, the number of women outside the labor force ticked back up above 56 million last month, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The month of June saw 56,085,000 women not participating in the workforce, an increase over May’s 55,951,000.
The BLS defines somebody not in the work force as a person over 16 who is not employed or made a specific effort to find work in the four previous weeks.
Women’s labor force participation rate also declined slightly, from 56.8 percent to 56.7 percent.
Women had a lower participation rate than their male counterparts who saw a participation rate of 69.0 and the national participation rate 62.6 percent.
The civilian labor force for women in June declined as well from 73,577,000 in May to 73,547,000.
Of those women considered to be in the workforce 69,719,000 had a job and 3,828,000 were looking for one, or unemployed. The unemployment rate for women was 5.2 percent.