More Wives Now Outearn Their Husbands. They Also Stay Together Longer.

Marriages in which wives outearn their husbands are not only more common, but less likely to end in divorce than in the past.

Couples married in the late 1960s and 1970s were 70% more likely to divorce when wives earned the same or slightly more than their husbands compared with couples where the husband earned more, according to research from Christine Schwartz and Pilar Gonalons-Pons, sociologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. For couples married in the 1990s, however, the divorce rate for those with female breadwinners had fallen to 4% higher than male breadwinners.

The reasons these marriages are succeeding seem to be cultural as well as economic, Prof. Schwartz said. Growth in women’s educational and career trajectories has removed some of the stigma of lower incomes for husbands. And the higher cost of building a life together has made it a necessity for more couples to maximise their two incomes.

Sarah O’Brien, a 35-year-old archivist in Palm Desert, Calif., overtook her husband in earnings five years ago. The couple first met climbing the ranks of the public library world together, but she worried he would be uneasy about what her higher income would mean for his role in the household.

When they sat down to have the conversation, Ms. O’Brien said her husband, David Murguia, a 36-year-old circulation manager, told her that he was proud of her.

“I don’t have the ego of ‘I need to earn more money,’” Mr. Murguia said. “More money for her is more money for us, and more money for me is more money for us.”

Ms. O’Brien and Mr. Murguia are one of many more egalitarian marriages. The share of women outearning their husbands has tripled over the last 50 years, from 5% to 16% of all opposite-sex marriages, according to data from Pew Research Center.

Men used to worry that having a more financially successful wife could be detrimental to their own careers, said Johanna Rickne, professor of economics at the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University. Women in the upper echelons of their professions were more likely to be divorced than women in less prestigious positions and were far less likely to be married at all.

“It’s changing, and now there is progress in the sensitivity to women’s economic empowerment within relationships,” Prof. Rickne said.

When Sally Mellinger, a 38-year-old director of content strategy in South Bend, Ind., first moved in with her fiancé, she said they both talked about their experiences as breadwinners: Ms. Mellinger as the wife outearning the husband in her first marriage and her fiancé, Luis Beltran, as the sole breadwinner in his own previous relationship.

Nearly three years later, Ms. Mellinger brings in nearly triple in salary what Mr. Beltran makes as the owner of his own barber shop. But she said talking about what their combined incomes can do for their shared future isn’t a loaded conversation but instead a hopeful one.

“When I was previously married, I was the major breadwinner and everything was on me,” Mr. Beltran said. “I see her as my equal, and I feel like at this point, because she is a boss, I admire that and I see a future.”

Despite the shifting viewpoints on female breadwinners, there remains a gender pay gap. As of 2022, women earned an average 82% of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

Over the same period, the overall divorce rate has declined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and younger couples are entering first marriages at later ages.

Relying on a single breadwinner to bring home all the bacon is no longer a sustainable model for many couples, especially those raising children, said Jennifer Glass, professor of liberal arts and executive director for the Council on Contemporary Families at the University of Texas at Austin. The median cost of keeping an infant in daycare ranges from $8,000 a year in more rural areas to nearly $17,000 in major cities.

“The traditional family structure leaves you poor today,” Prof. Glass said.

Farnoosh Torabi, who hosts a personal finance podcast, said she’s spoken with couples who say they need two incomes to protect their household against a possible recession, the next round of layoffs or any other unforeseen challenges.

In her own marriage, Ms. Torabi said she had been primed to defend her newfound breadwinning status when she overtook her husband in earnings before they were married. But instead, the two celebrated her success—and the financial freedom it afforded them both. The conventional wisdom was no longer true, she said.

“I was told that would be a turnoff: Don’t tell guys you have ambitions because they’re not going to feel like they can take care of you,” she said.

Americans, by many measures, are unhappier at work than they have been in years.

Despite wage increases, more paid time off and greater control over where they work, the number of U.S. workers who say they are angry, stressed and disengaged is climbing, according to Gallup’s 2023 workplace report. Meanwhile, a BambooHR analysis of data from more than 57,000 workers shows job-satisfaction scores have fallen to their lowest point since early 2020, after a 10% drop this year alone.

In interviews with workers around the country, it is clear the unhappiness is part of a rethinking of work life that began in 2020. The sources of workers’ discontent range from inflation, which is erasing much of recent pay gains, to the still-unsettled nature of the workday. People chafe against being micromanaged back to offices, yet they also find isolating aspects of hybrid and remote work. A cooling job market—especially in white-collar roles—is leaving many professionals feeling stuck.

Companies have largely moved on from pandemic operating mode, cutting costs and renewing a focus on productivity. The disconnect with workers has managers frustrated, and no quick fix seems to be at hand. Those in charge said they have given staff more money, flexibility and support, only to come up short.

The experiences of workers like Lindsey Leesmann suggest how expectations have shifted from just a few years ago. Leesmann, 38 years old, said she soured on a philanthropy job after having to return to the office two days a week earlier this year.

Prepandemic, she would have been happy working three days a week at home. “It would have been a dream come true.” Still, her team’s in-office requirements seemed like going backward, and made her feel that her professionalism and work quality were in doubt. Instead of collaborating more, she and others rarely left their desks, except for meetings or lunch, she said. Negative feelings followed her home on her hourlong commute, leaving her short-tempered with her kids.

“You try to keep work and home separate, but that sort of stuff is just impacting your mental health so much,” said Leesmann, who recently moved to a new job that requires five in-office days a month.

No more honeymoon

The discontent has business leaders struggling for answers, said Stephan Scholl, chief executive of Alight Solutions, a technology company focused on benefits and payroll administration. Many of the Fortune 100 companies on Alight’s client list boosted spending on employee benefits such as mental health, child care and well-being bonuses by 20% over the pandemic years.

“All that extra spend has not translated into happier employees,” Scholl said. In an Alight survey of 2,000 U.S. employees this year, 34% said they often dread starting their workday—an 11-percentage-point rise since 2020. Corporate clients have told him mental-health claims and costs from employee turnover are rising.

One factor is the share of workers who are relatively new to their roles after record levels of job-switching, said Benjamin Granger, chief workplace psychologist at software company Qualtrics. Many employers have focused more on hiring than situating new employees well, leaving many newbies feeling adrift. In other cases, workers discovered shiny-seeming new jobs weren’t a great fit.

The upshot is that the newest workers are among the least satisfied, Qualtrics data show—a reversal of the higher levels of enthusiasm that fresh hires typically voice. In its study of nearly 37,000 workers published last month, people less than six months into a job reported lower levels of engagement, feelings of inclusion and intent to stay than longer-tenured workers. They also scored lower on those metrics than new workers in 2022, suggesting the pay raises that lured many people to new jobs might not be as satisfying as they were a year or two ago.

“What happened to that honeymoon phase?” Granger said.

John Shurr, a 66-year-old former manufacturing engineer, took a job as an inventory manager at a heavy-equipment retailer in the spring in Missoula, Mont., after being laid off during the pandemic.

“It was a nice job title on a pretty rotten job,” said Shurr, who learned soon after starting that his duties would also include sales to walk-in customers.

When Shurr broached the subject, his boss asked him to give it a chance and said he was really needed on the showroom floor. Shurr, who describes himself as more of a computer guy, quit about a month later.

“I feel kind of trapped at the moment,” said Shurr, who has since taken a part-time job as a parts manager as he tries to find full-time work.

Bridging the distance

Long-distance relationships between bosses and staff might also be an issue. Nearly a third of workers at large firms don’t work in the same metro area as their managers, up from about 23% in February 2020, according to data from payroll provider ADP.

Distance has weakened ties among co-workers and heightened conflict, said Moshe Cohen, a mediator and negotiation coach who teaches conflict resolution at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He has noticed more employees calling co-workers or bosses toxic or impossible, signs that trust is thin.

Cohen’s corporate clients said their employees are increasingly transactional with one another. Some are coaching workers in the finer points of dialogue, such as saying hello first before jumping into the substance of a conversation.

“The idea of slowing down, taking the time, being genuine, trying to actually establish some sort of connection with the other person—that’s really missing,” Cohen said.

One Los Angeles-based consultant in his 20s, who asked to remain anonymous because he is seeking another job, said that when he started his job at a large company last year, his largely remote colleagues were focused on their own work, unwilling to show a new hire the ropes or invite him for coffee. Many leave cameras off for video calls and few people show up at the office, making it hard to build relationships.

“There’s zero humanity,” he said, noting that he is seeking another job with a strong office culture.

The share of U.S. companies mandating office attendance five days a week has fallen this year—to 38% in October from 49% at the start of the year—according to Scoop Technologies, a software firm that developed an index to monitor workplace policies of nearly 4,500 companies.

Some companies have reversed flexible remote-work policies—in large part, they said, to boost employee engagement and productivity—only to face worker backlash.

Not all the data point downward. A Conference Board survey in November 2022 of U.S. adults showed workers were more satisfied with their jobs than they had been in years. Key contingents among the happiest employees: people who voluntarily switched roles during the pandemic and those working a mix of in-person and remote days. But that poll was taken before a spate of layoffs at high-profile companies and big declines in the number of knowledge-worker and professional jobs advertised.

At Farmers Group, workers posted thousands of mostly negative comments on the insurer’s internal social-media platform after its new CEO nixed the company’s previous policy allowing most workers to be remote.

Employees like Kandy Mimande said they felt betrayed. “We couldn’t get the ‘why,’” said the 43-year-old, who had sold her car and spent thousands of dollars to redo her home office under the remote-work policy. She shelled out $10,000 for a used car for the commute. A company spokesperson said that not all employees will support every business decision and that Farmers hasn’t seen a significant impact on staff retention.

During a brief leave, Mimande realised she no longer felt a sense of purpose from her product-management job. She resigned last month after she and her wife decided they could live on one salary.

She now helps promote a band and pet-sits. “It’s so much easier for me to report to myself,” she said.

More Wives Now Outearn Their Husbands. They Also Stay Together Longer.

The share of marriages with women breadwinners tripled over the last 50 years

U.S. employees are more dissatisfied than they were in the thick of the pandemic

No more honeymoon

Bridging the distance