Study says mom's home labor worth six figures

The value of a mother's love cannot be measured, by most accounts. But if you want to think about such things in economic terms, her work is worth more than ever.

That's according to an annual "Mother's Day Index" compiled by Insure.com, a website that helps consumers comparison-shop for life, home and auto insurance.

"The contribution moms make to their families is priceless," personal finance writer Sarah Sharkey noted in introducing this year's analysis. "However, if America's mothers were paid for their work around the house, they would have earned an annual salary of $145,235 over the past year, according to Insure.com's Mother's Day Index for 2025."

That's up 4% from mom's hypothetical salary of $140,315 in the 2024 index, Insure.com noted. Average wages for all jobs grew 1.4% from March 2024 to March 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The index doesn't include any work mothers do outside the home, or the compensation they receive in that context.

To come up with its analysis, Insure.com researched the types of work mothers report doing for their families as well as BLS data about mean hourly wages. For example, mothers report spending 14 hours a week preparing meals, on average, and cooks in the United States earn an average of $17.14 an hour; that works out to $12,478, on an annual basis.

The index includes 19 "professional" roles, from teaching, nursing, counseling, cooking, laundry services and groundskeeping to accounting, convention planning and serving as private investigators and judges when the need arises.

Often, Insure.com noted, mothers are tasked with playing several roles at once.

"Stay-at-home mothers juggle multiple jobs behind the scenes without compensation," said Nupur Gambhir, managing editor at Insure.com, in a statement accompanying the report. "The Mother's Day Index is our way of recognizing some of the economic value of caregivers -- their extraordinary workload would easily earn them six figures in the job market."