Dive Brief:
- In the spirit of Mother's Day this Sunday, Salary.com, a provider of employer-reported compensation data, software and services, checked into the data and for the 16th straight year is offering an educated estimate of how much stay-at-home moms would earn if they were paid commensurate with market rates.
- Identifying "jobs" moms perform daily and comparing them to the market compensation for those roles, Salary.com reports that in 2016 working moms would receive a yearly salary of $90,222 for nearly 59 hours of work per week, while stay-at-home moms would earn nearly $143,102 for 92 hours per week.
- For the past 16 years, Salary.com has surveyed thousands of working and stay-at-home moms to identify their most time-consuming tasks. By applying its salary data on the pay of each job and factoring in the number of hours worked including OT, the firm offers its estimate of what mothers would make if paid an annual salary.
Dive Insight:
Kent Plunkett, CEO of Salary.com, says that the company's goal is to provide a "real dollar value" on all of the tasks American mothers perform and the time spent on them—including the new responsibilities that have emerged in the last few years with the arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected homes. With moms now required to be "performance coaches and IT experts" on top of everything else they do, the value of their roles has increased significantly, Plunkett says.
The 2016 report found the ongoing shift to more technology-focused tasks has led to a large jump in what a mother’s work is worth compared to years past. For instance, in 2011, the research found working moms to have earned the equivalent of $53,471, while stay at home moms earned $115,432. Even when compared to 2015, a stay-at-home mom’s value has increased by nearly $20,000, up from $124,696 to this year’s $143,102.
Of course, this is all in fairly good (if pointed) fun, but it does shine a slanted light on the struggles of working parenthood that have inspired recent movements toward paid parental leave in the U.S.
