The number of women in the U.S. returning to or looking to reenter the workforce is at an all time high, according to the latest numbers out from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It is encouraging news coming out of the COVID 19 recession that took more than 13 million women out of the U.S. workforce.

While labor force participation among women between the prime working ages of 25 and 54 is made almost a full recovery nationally.

Women in Kentucky are still struggling to reenter the workforce.

We spoke to Charles, all, the executive director of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce's Center for Policy and Research, about why it's taking Kentucky longer to rebound.

We are seeing tremendous amount of job growth in Kentucky and throughout the nation as a whole.

I would say it was anticipated that we would return to some some level of increased private labor force participation in.

And it's I think what might be more unexpected is the fact that we return to it so quickly.

Kentucky tends to trail the nation as a whole when it comes to overall labor force participation.

If you take a look at primates, labor force participation, the story is no different.

There again, we're trailing the nation generally around three point so or so.

Something else that's caught my eye with Kentucky labor market data, though, is overall female workforce participation, particularly prime age.

Female workforce participation is is again following that trend.

It's lower than it is at the national level.

But if you drill down a little bit deeper, there's something that does raise your eyebrow, which is the unemployment rate for women between the ages of 25 and 34 is about 5.7%.

That's almost twice as high as it is for men in that same age group in Kentucky.

And that's that's a really curious thing.

You don't quite see that discrepancy at the national level.

I think you can hypothesize that childcare challenges is probably going to be a pretty significant contributor to why that particular age group, those 25 to 34 year old women, might be facing some more difficulty in getting a job.

Ultimately, what the unemployment rate tells you is you have a group of people that don't have a job, but they're actively trying to find one.

Kentucky has some of the lowest or has the lowest unemployment rate that we've ever seen.

But that particular group is really struggling to find employment, or at least more so than others.

And you would have to imagine that lack of access to affordable, quality child care is probably going to be a pretty big driver when you think about, you know, the dynamics of that particular age group, 25 to 34, that's that's a pretty common age to have young children.

And so that that's something that I've noticed that I think is problematic and I think certainly needs to be addressed from a policy perspective.

All said, one of the big drivers in the increase in labor force participation is, not surprisingly, inflation.

He said Many families need two incomes to get by in the current economy.