Best, Worst States for Working Moms

With Mother’s Day around the corner and the unemployment rate rising faster for women than for men, the personal-finance website WalletHub on May 6 released its report on 2020’s Best & Worst States for Working Moms.

In order to help ease the burden on mothers in the workforce, WalletHub compared the attractiveness of each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for a working mother based on 17 key metrics. The data set ranges from median women’s salary to female unemployment rate to day-care quality.

Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and nearly 70% of moms with children under age 18 were working in 2019, John S Kiernan, Managing Editor for WalletHub writes. Unfortunately, those numbers are decreasing in 2020, as data shows that during the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment is rising faster for women than it is for men, which begs the question of whether women are being targeted for layoffs as a result of sexism or if they just are more likely to work in highly-affected industries.

Life as a Working Mom in California (1=Best; 25=Avg.)

• 49th – Day-Care Quality
• 41st – Child-Care Costs (Adjusted for Median Women’s Salary)
• 26th – Pediatricians per Capita
• 1st – Gender Pay Gap (Women’s Earnings as % of Men’s)
• 30th – Ratio of Female Executives to Male Executives
• 49th – Median Women’s Salary (Adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 44th – Female Unemployment Rate
• 6th – Parental-Leave Policy Score
• 16th – Avg. Length of Woman’s Work Week (in Hours)
• 19th – % of Single-Mom Families in Poverty

Caitlin McLean, Ph.D., Workforce Research Specialist, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley,
said to help working parents, companies can “Recognize the importance of early care and education programs for employee stability and productivity as well as children’s learning. Advocate for public investment in high-quality early care and education programs as essential learning foundations for the future workforce.”

For the full report, please click here.