Stay-at-Home Dads Worth Something Too
Salary.com’s Director of New Product Development Kevin Cuddeback said in an announcement that the company’s research showed a compensation of $125,340 for stay-at-home dads and $71,160 for working dads for the “dad job” portion of their work.
Salary.com’s most recent study on compensation for moms pegged the 2006 pay at $134,121 for stay-at-home moms and $85,876 annually for working moms for the mom portion of their work (See Report: Stay at Home Moms Due 2% Raise ).
Salary.com consulted with stay-at-home and working dads, using the survey results to rank the top 10 jobs that make up a dad’s job description. According to Salary.com they are:
- Computer Operator,
- General Maintenance Worker,
- CEO,
- Day Care Center Teacher,
- Laundry Machine Operator,
- Facilities Manager,
- Psychologist,
- Van Driver, and
- Cook and Groundskeeper.
All 10 titles were assigned a dollar value based on the number of hours the respondents spend on each job, and then the annual salary figures were totaled. A stay-at-home dad’s work week totaled 81 hours, according to the survey results. Cuddeback pointed out that this is about 10 hours shorter than the work week for a working dad, working mom, or stay-at-home mom. He said the rarity of stay-at-home dads – 6 dads in 1,000 – made it difficult to calculate statistics.
Other findings of the survey include:
- Dads do not earn as much overtime as moms for their stay-at-home jobs.
- The typical working dad earned no overtime in his 39.6-hour dad’s work week, while working moms earned, on average, 27% of their “mom salary” in overtime.
- Although their hours differed, both parents had eight jobs in common: day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, computer operator, CEO, facilities manager, psychologist, van driver, and cook.
- Dads had two jobs in their top 10 that moms did not have: general maintenance worker and groundskeeper.
- Moms had two unique counterpart jobs: janitor and housekeeper.
Dads and their families can visit http://www.salary.com to create their own “dad paycheck” with the Dad Salary Wizard. The wizard allows the user to price the “dad job,” based on location and dad’s personal hours worked in each of the 10 roles. Users can create a customized mock dad paycheck and dad pay stub, which can be printed.