Mothers' employment rate (child <3), North Rhine-Westphalia
Mothers' employment rate (child <3), North Rhine-Westphalia stood at 37.1 percent in 2025, according to Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMBFSFJ) – Digital Gender Equality Atlas. It is one of the indicators in the Gender gaps by federal state table (Value · Annual), with a complete series running from 2008 to 2025. The complete series with an interactive chart, free to download.
This indicator in the Gender gaps by federal state table
| Indicator | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All parents | 60.8 | 62 | 62.6 | 62.5 | 60.4 | 59.5 | 58.6 | 57.9 | 58.1 | 57.3 | |
| Mothers | 37.1 | 38.5 | 38.4 | 38.8 | 36.6 | 35.8 | 32.7 | 32.4 | 32.2 | 30.8 | |
| Fathers | 86.8 | 87.8 | 88.9 | 88.3 | 86 | 84.8 | 87.2 | 86 | 86.6 | 86.6 |
Understanding mothers' employment rate (child <3), North Rhine-Westphalia
Restricting the scope to female parents in North Rhine-Westphalia living with a child under three, this series captures the percentage holding an employment relationship. It incorporates salaried personnel, hourly wage earners, self-employed professionals, and mothers on parental leave who retain job security with their employers. Women without formal contracts, jobseekers, and mothers whose children reside in separate households are excluded, as are those caring only for children aged three and above. Unlike the father-specific indicator for North Rhine-Westphalia, this series directly reflects maternal career continuity and parental leave decisions, while avoiding the blending effect present in the all-parents metric.
Year-on-year comparisons represent the sound analytical method for reading maternal employment, filtering out brief procedural variations across survey rounds. Annual reporting ensures that structural changes in legal entitlement, childcare provision, and return-to-work conventions are observed over meaningful horizons. Readers should remain conscious of statistical discontinuities caused by revised population weights and survey modernizations across different reporting cycles. Crucially, changing rates in this series must not be confused with physical presence in the workplace, since parents on leave are counted as employed. Furthermore, the data record residency in North Rhine-Westphalia rather than place of work and do not differentiate between short part-time arrangements and full-time employment.
Frequently asked questions
- Does a mother in North Rhine-Westphalia on leave count as employed if she is not receiving wages?
- As long as she maintains a formal employment contract with an employer and has an assurance of return, she is counted as employed.
- How does this series differ from the general female employment rate in North Rhine-Westphalia?
- This indicator isolates mothers co-residing with a child under three, whereas the general female rate encompasses all working-age women regardless of parental status.
- Does this measure reflect the volume of hours worked by North Rhine-Westphalia mothers?
- The indicator is an unweighted headcount rate that treats marginal part-time hours and full-time positions identically.