Mother’s Day 2019: This map shows the best and worst states for working moms
Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and many of those are working moms, trying to juggle jobs and families and emotional labor and housework with career goals. And they are doing it all for just 85% of what men made in 2018.
States can make life a little easier for the more than 70% of working moms with young children in a number of ways: by offering child care programs, creating policies to fight the gender wage gap, creating professional opportunities for women, and enacting parent leave policies. However, they are fighting an uphill battle as discrimination against working moms is rampant, leading many mothers to consider not having a second child.
WalletHub put together a panel of experts to go over data points culled from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the National Partnership for Women & Families. They then used that information to compare the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia across three categories—child care, professional opportunities, and work-life balance—and 16 relevant metrics. They then put together a list of the best and worst for working moms.
Check out the full list here, but here are the top five states:
And the bottom five:
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