January 2025
What’s the power of a woman’s wallet?
Women’s job growth has been rising faster than overall employment over the last two years, helping drive wage and spending growth.
Key takeaways
- Consumer spending remained resilient throughout 2024, and women played a key role. Their median discretionary spending was up 0.9% year-over-year in November, and has been growing faster than men's for the past two years, per Bank of America internal data.
- According to Bank of America small business account data, this partly reflects above-average payroll growth in women-intensive service sectors for the past two years. Plus, increased labor force participation rates among women – supported by higher numbers of graduates – suggest relative strength in 2025.
- Moreover, women's median annual income growth continues to outpace men's, helped by greater pay increases when changing jobs – a difference that increased to the highest level in over three years at the end of 2024.
Read our full analysis for a more in-depth look at these trends.
