“spending 8-9hrs a day at a grueling job instead of playing with your kids”
A lot of people don’t see it this way. Taking care of a young child can be similarly grueling and I know a few people who have taken jobs that only paid about the same as the cost of daycare because that’s what they preferred to do with their time.
“The median wage in the U.S. is about $13.25”
Source? It seems low to me. The median annual income for full time workers over 25 is $39,509 (US Census, 2006, via wikipedia) and if you divide that by 40 hours a week you get $19/hour. To get the median wage down to $13.25 you’d need people working about 57 hours a week.
Taking care of a young child can be similarly grueling and I know a few people who have taken jobs that only paid about the same as the cost of daycare because that’s what they preferred to do with there time.
The issue isn’t only whether you find taking care of kids “grueling”. In comparing staying at home to working, don’t think only about the immediate balance of salary vs. day care, think about the situation in the future. What will be your salary in 15 years if you stay in the workforce and if you try to re-enter the workforce after a 15-year break? What will you work skills be?
The SSA link gives a median annual compensation of $27,519 but doesn’t give an hourly rate. I notice that if I divide that number by 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year I get about $13.25; is that what you did? The SSA data includes lots of people working less than 40 hours a week, so if you want to use their numbers you need some way to connect that to hours worked. While I can’t find median hours worked, I found a mean of 33/week. Matching up the median compensation with mean hours worked is very dodgy, but lets assume it’s ok and also that this average employee gets no vacation or holidays. This gives us 33*52=1716 hours per year earning $27,519, or $16/hour. This is below the $19/hour I estimated from Census data above, which we should expect if part time workers tend to be paid less, but nowhere near as low as $13.25. And lots of people do get vacation, holidays, sick time, etc.
Sorry, I’m confused. To estimate how much people are paid per hour, you took total pay and divided it by the number of hours their kids would need to be in daycare? Dividing total pay by hours worked would make much more sense.
Minor:
“spending 8-9hrs a day at a grueling job instead of playing with your kids”
A lot of people don’t see it this way. Taking care of a young child can be similarly grueling and I know a few people who have taken jobs that only paid about the same as the cost of daycare because that’s what they preferred to do with their time.
“The median wage in the U.S. is about $13.25”
Source? It seems low to me. The median annual income for full time workers over 25 is $39,509 (US Census, 2006, via wikipedia) and if you divide that by 40 hours a week you get $19/hour. To get the median wage down to $13.25 you’d need people working about 57 hours a week.
The issue isn’t only whether you find taking care of kids “grueling”. In comparing staying at home to working, don’t think only about the immediate balance of salary vs. day care, think about the situation in the future. What will be your salary in 15 years if you stay in the workforce and if you try to re-enter the workforce after a 15-year break? What will you work skills be?
Agreed, though in both of the cases I’m thinking of the jobs weren’t ones where you build up long-term skills.
Or a lot of people with part-time jobs who are making less than $19/hour. Which matches observation pretty well.
Social security administration:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
The SSA link gives a median annual compensation of $27,519 but doesn’t give an hourly rate. I notice that if I divide that number by 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year I get about $13.25; is that what you did? The SSA data includes lots of people working less than 40 hours a week, so if you want to use their numbers you need some way to connect that to hours worked. While I can’t find median hours worked, I found a mean of 33/week. Matching up the median compensation with mean hours worked is very dodgy, but lets assume it’s ok and also that this average employee gets no vacation or holidays. This gives us 33*52=1716 hours per year earning $27,519, or $16/hour. This is below the $19/hour I estimated from Census data above, which we should expect if part time workers tend to be paid less, but nowhere near as low as $13.25. And lots of people do get vacation, holidays, sick time, etc.
Yes, I divided by 40 hrs per week because that was the daycare hours under consideration.
Sorry, I’m confused. To estimate how much people are paid per hour, you took total pay and divided it by the number of hours their kids would need to be in daycare? Dividing total pay by hours worked would make much more sense.