Data & Research May 2, 2007

Now, How Much Would You Pay?

Whether you are a Mom, are married to a Mom, have, or had a Mom (hopefully that covers everyone), odds are you’d agree with the statement that their care and ministrations are – to steal a phrase – priceless.
Reported by
That being said, Salary.com, Inc’s 2007 Mom Salary survey indicates that the time mothers spend performing 10 typical job functions would equate to an annual salary of $138,095 for a stay-at-home mom. That’s a 3% bump over the 2006 national median salary of $134,121, but still nearly one percentage point below employers’ predictions of an average 3.9% annual pay increase, according to a press release. Worse, a working mom’s “at-home’ salary (on top of what they earn in the workplace) is $85,939 in 2007— an increase of only $63 from last year.
Multiple Jobs, No Breaks
Bill Coleman, senior vice president and chief compensation officer at Salary.com. “Mom works multiple jobs and rarely gets a break from the action, working an average of 52 hours of overtime.’ That being said, Salary.com claims that the lower-than-average merit increase reflects “…that many of the “mom jobs’ are not as highly valued as the management, non-exempt and executive jobs performed by most U.S. employees.’
A large portion of mom’s salary is from the amount of overtime worked. According to the Salary.com survey’s 40,000 mother-respondents, stay-at-home moms work a 92 hour “workweek’ – more than half her time spent on the job is overtime. Working moms, however, logged more than nine hours of overtime for an average 49 hour mom workweek, beyond their full-time paying jobs.
Check “Mate’
On a more personal note, Salary.com makes available a Mom Salary Wizard (at http://mom.salary.com) to help you put a dollar value on Mom’s paycheck – and with the inclusion of a zip code, you can even take into account regional differences. The site will even let you customize a paycheck for Mom, by hours spent in various areas (and see how it compares with national norms), and you can even personalize it with her name – then print – or email it.
The site even asks (and answers) the question “What about Dad?’
Now, as for who is going to pay Mom what she’s “worth’, Salary.com has worked with Abbott’s Similac brand to create a nationwide contest to answer this question. Abbott is holding the “Similac Mom’s $135K Payday’ contest, which will award one mother with a full year’s salary in recognition for all her hard work. You can find out more about that at http://SimilacMomsPayday.com
What it doesn’t answer, of course – is how to turn those pretend paychecks into retirement savings.
p.s. Mother’s Day is May 13

«