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Survey provides estimate of stay at home mom’s salary
Reprinted with permission from JustJobs.com
Salary.com recently released its annual estimate of what stay-at-home moms would make if they contributed the same amount of work in the business world. According to their estimates, the national median salary that is equivalent to the amount of work stay-at-home moms do is $134,121, with a low of $75,010 and a high of $191,983.
That’s great news. Maybe someday a stay-at home mom’s husband and children will cut her a check for that much—and kick in a holiday bonus.
If you include at least part of the opportunity cost (in terms of years of salary and opportunities lost) of being a stay-at-home mom into the salary calculation, you’d probably get a much higher figure than the $134,121. And while that number looks great on paper (and is hopefully non taxable income), when you break it down you realize that for all the hard work that mothers do, in my opinion they’re still not paid what they are worth.
The average American works between 40 and 50 hours, so let’s say he or she works 45 hours in a five day work week for 50 weeks a year (2 weeks vacation). Taking away the two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour lunch, that figure drops to 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. According to salary.com, the average American earned $40,000 in 2005. Dividing the average salary by the number of hours worked, you come up with and average American hourly wage of $20.00.
Let’s see how much Mom makes.
Between taking care of the kids, cooking meals, keeping the house clean, taking kids to soccer practice, etc., stay at home moms probably work anywhere from 12 to 18 hours a day, so lets say they work 15 hours a day for five weekdays, and about 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday for a (rounded) grand total of 100 hours a week, for 52 weeks per year. Stay-at-home moms rarely get vacation time, so for a full year they will work nearly 5,200 hours (well over twice the amount of hours the average American works), making a wage of 25.79, just $5.79 (one Big Mac combo) more than the average American probably makes.
My contention here is that stay-at-home moms aren’t valued enough in this imaginary salary estimation by both myself and Salary.com, though theirs is arguably more scientific (you would think). If you’re putting in more work in more than twice as many hours you would think your wages would be valued at least twice as much (at least I would).
I think Salary.com should increase its imaginary salary estimate for stay-at-home moms based on the amount of hours they work. In other words, since stay-at-home moms work 2.6 time the amount of hours average Americans work, they should get paid 2.6 times hourly wage they make (a flawed calculation based on how much I love my own mother, I know). In my world of imaginary salaries, stay-at-home moms would make $52.00 an hour, for an annual salary of $270,400.
The truth is that there’s no real value we can put on all of the hard work that stay-at-home moms like my own out into caring for us, raising us, and making sure that we turned out all right. But if you could, it would be around $270 grand.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Salary.com recently released its annual estimate of what stay-at-home moms would make if they contributed the same amount of work in the business world. According to their estimates, the national median salary that is equivalent to the amount of work stay-at-home moms do is $134,121, with a low of $75,010 and a high of $191,983.That’s great news. Maybe someday a stay-at home mom’s husband and children will cut her a check for that much—and kick in a holiday bonus.
If you include at least part of the opportunity cost (in terms of years of salary and opportunities lost) of being a stay-at-home mom into the salary calculation, you’d probably get a much higher figure than the $134,121. And while that number looks great on paper (and is hopefully non taxable income), when you break it down you realize that for all the hard work that mothers do, in my opinion they’re still not paid what they are worth.
The average American works between 40 and 50 hours, so let’s say he or she works 45 hours in a five day work week for 50 weeks a year (2 weeks vacation). Taking away the two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour lunch, that figure drops to 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. According to salary.com, the average American earned $40,000 in 2005. Dividing the average salary by the number of hours worked, you come up with and average American hourly wage of $20.00.
Let’s see how much Mom makes.
Between taking care of the kids, cooking meals, keeping the house clean, taking kids to soccer practice, etc., stay at home moms probably work anywhere from 12 to 18 hours a day, so lets say they work 15 hours a day for five weekdays, and about 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday for a (rounded) grand total of 100 hours a week, for 52 weeks per year. Stay-at-home moms rarely get vacation time, so for a full year they will work nearly 5,200 hours (well over twice the amount of hours the average American works), making a wage of 25.79, just $5.79 (one Big Mac combo) more than the average American probably makes.
My contention here is that stay-at-home moms aren’t valued enough in this imaginary salary estimation by both myself and Salary.com, though theirs is arguably more scientific (you would think). If you’re putting in more work in more than twice as many hours you would think your wages would be valued at least twice as much (at least I would).
I think Salary.com should increase its imaginary salary estimate for stay-at-home moms based on the amount of hours they work. In other words, since stay-at-home moms work 2.6 time the amount of hours average Americans work, they should get paid 2.6 times hourly wage they make (a flawed calculation based on how much I love my own mother, I know). In my world of imaginary salaries, stay-at-home moms would make $52.00 an hour, for an annual salary of $270,400.
The truth is that there’s no real value we can put on all of the hard work that stay-at-home moms like my own out into caring for us, raising us, and making sure that we turned out all right. But if you could, it would be around $270 grand.
Happy Mother’s Day!
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