Pour your favorite sip, because there is a headline I have been sitting with this week and want to share with you.

You may have seen it too:

Women accounted for all of the net job losses in July.

My first reaction was probably similar to yours.

Wow. What is happening to women at work?

Because so much of my work is about why accomplished women stay, leave, and advance, I wanted to understand what those numbers were really telling us.

The more I looked, the more I realized something important:

The headline is true. And it is still incomplete.

The numbers, plainly

The U.S. economy lost a net 23,000 jobs in July. According to the National Women’s Law Center’s analysis of federal jobs data, women lost 32,000 jobs while men gained 9,000.

Another 165,000 women age 20 and older left the labor force entirely, meaning they were neither working nor actively looking for work. Since January, there are 845,000 fewer women in the labor force, compared with 406,000 fewer men.

Wowza!

Those numbers deserve our attention.

But before we decide what they mean, we need to ask:

Which women? In which jobs? Over what period of time?

Where the losses landed

Industry matters.

One especially striking example came from leisure and hospitality. The sector lost 40,000 jobs overall in July, but women lost 63,000 jobs while men gained 23,000. Women make up just over half of that workforce.

Naturally, I wanted to know more.

What jobs were the men gaining? Which jobs were women losing?

And this is where the data stopped answering my questions.

The monthly figures do not tell us which specific occupations produced that gender difference. I could create a theory about restaurant jobs, hotels, entertainment, management, or something else.

But it would be just that: a theory.

The number tells us something interesting happened. It does not yet tell us why.

A distinct story for Black women

There is also another layer we should not collapse into the larger headline.

Black women’s unemployment rate fell from 6.2% in June to 5.8% in July. At first glance, that sounds encouraging.

Yet overall Black employment declined by 123,000 during the month. A falling unemployment rate does not necessarily mean everyone who disappeared from the count found a job.

And this comes after a particularly difficult 2025 for Black women. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that Black women ended last year with 113,000 fewer jobs than they began it with. Their federal employment declined by more than 30%.

So “women lost jobs in July” and “Black women have experienced a deeper pattern of job loss” are related stories.

But they are not the same story.

Precision matters.

And that may be one of the most useful leadership lessons in all of these numbers.

All of this made me think about the numbers organizations use to understand their own women.

What does this have to do with retaining high-impact women?

These national numbers donottell us whether senior women are leaving your company or whether your leadership pipeline is weakening.

I am not suggesting you should use this summer’s job data to claim that.

But the lesson underneath the data applies directly:

One overall number can hide very different stories underneath it.

Suppose your organization gives you one overall turnover rate for women.

Is it good? Bad? Improving?

Are your highest-performing women staying?

Are women leaving between manager and director?

Are certain departments losing women while others retain them?

Are women who have been passed over for promotion more likely to leave?

Are caregiving responsibilities and the mental load contributing to some of those exits?

Are women of color having a different experience?

Are your high-potential women being sponsored and advancing?

That is why level matters.McKinsey’s latestWomen in the Workplacedata show that women represent 42% of managers, 39% of senior managers and directors, and 35% of vice presidents. The representation narrows as leadership level rises.

A company could have an overall retention number for women that looks perfectly acceptable and still be losingexactly the women it can least afford to lose.

That is why the number is the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

Part of my work with organizations seeking to retain accomplished, high-impact women is helping them look underneath those numbers:

Which women are leaving? Where are we losing them? What happened before they left? And what could we have influenced?

Those questions lead to very different solutions than simply saying, “We need to retain more women.”

Questions to carry into the week

• Which women are hidden inside your overall retention number?

• Are your high-performing and high-potential women staying, advancing, and being sponsored at the same rates as their peers?

• At what level or moment do women begin disappearing from your leadership pipeline?

• What do you think you know from your numbers that you actually need to investigate?

Before you finish your cup

The July jobs headline got my attention.

The questions underneath it taught me more.

Women accounted for July’s net job losses. Some industries were affected very differently from others. And Black women continue to experience a distinct employment pattern that deserves to be understood on its own terms.

All of those things can be true at once.

That is complexity, not contradiction.

When a statistic surprises us, confirms something we already believe, or makes us angry, perhaps our first job is not to repeat it.

Our first job is to get curious.

Which people? Which roles? What circumstances? What period of time? What might this number be hiding? And how does it intersect with the cultural and organizational conditions we already know can make it harder for women to stay and advance?

Those are useful questions whether we are studying the U.S. economy or trying to understand why an accomplished woman no longer sees a future inside our organization.

Good leaders notice the headline.

Great leaders look underneath it.

Warmly,

Dawn

Research Notes

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.The Employment Situation — July 2026.

National Women’s Law Center.July Jobs Report: Women Accounted for 100 Percent of the Labor Force Decline.August 7, 2026.

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.July 2026 Jobs Day Analysis.August 7, 2026.

Institute for Women’s Policy Research.Black Women Disproportionately Sidelined in Year One of Trump’s Second Term.February 2026.

McKinsey & Company andLeanIn.Org.Women in the Workplace 2025.

P.S. This is the end of our Summer Recipe Series☀️

This comes from an old church acquaintance who showed us how to make this recipe in bulk as a fundraiser meal after church for the local Christian school our kids attended. Add a baked potatoes and some sort of vegetable and it will power you throughout the day. We used to do the recipe x13 to serve 175. If you have time, try the slow cook 175 degree baking option. The flavors then really deep in. Enjoy!

BRENDA'S MEATLOAF