Shocking Labor Supply: A Reassessment of the Role of World War II on Women's Labor Supply

The dominant feature of the female labor force in the United States across the twentieth century is its striking and large increase. But continuity in the increase may be an illusion. Women’s paid employment may have been permanently altered by certain events. The 1940s have been viewed as such a watershed decade. Labor force changes from 1940 to 1945 were huge. Around 14 million men were mobilized, the male labor force declined by almost 9 million, and the female labor force, which stood at 14 million in 1940, increased by more than 7 million. Surveys show that various norms loosened during the 1940s. But according to a revisionist view the changes did not persist. Women were forced off their jobs at war’s end, and the war propaganda machine went into reverse gear after VJ-Day, extolling the virtues of women’s role in the home. Longitudinal data have been used to determine the veracity of these two opposing views. Various surveys, including the originals underlying the Palmer report, enabled a piecing together of cohort work histories (Goldin 1991a). Among the many findings is that the women who entered