How much do you pay your baby sitter?
Is it $5 an hour? $10 an hour? More?
The Wall Street Journal reported on a recent survey showing that the average baby sitters make significantly more than $10 an hour.
“On a national basis, the average hourly rate was $13.44 last year, up 28 percent from $10.50 five years earlier, as measured by the pay families are offering when they seek sitters on website Care.com,” reported the Wall Street Journal.
The article reported that the highest paying parents can be found in San Francisco, where a sitter can make $16.65 an hour on average. The lowest paid baby sitters are in Grand Rapids, Michigan, shelling out an hourly average of $11.31.
Care.com, which facilitates baby sitting and child care, doesn't directly explain the responsibilities entailed at those rates, and some sitters could be asked to do more than watch a video with the kids. But, if someone worked as a full-time sitter within those hourly rates, they would average somewhere between $23,534.80 and $34,632 a year.
Below are some other jobs that have average hourly rates comparable to those of baby sitters or worse, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook.
1. Barbers, hairdressers and cosmetologists
After spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of schooling to receive a state license, barbers, hairdressers and cosmetologists make less than many baby sitters.
Hairstylists can make about $10.95 an hour. Barbers make a little more than baby sitters with an average wage of $12.06. Hairdressers and cosmetologist both make an average of $10.91.
2. Construction laborers and helpers
A construction worker makes roughly $14.02 on average, which is more than most baby sitters but below the higher average hourly rate.
Both jobs may require heavy lifting, building with blocks and performing minor emergency medical procedures.
3. Dental assistants
The person doing the busy work during your teeth cleanings makes six cents an hour less than the high-end of baby sitters.
A state license is required to be a dental assistant, who makes an average $16.59 an hour.
4. Bank tellers
Bank tellers may handle a lot of cash, but they take home an average $11.99 per hour, which is on the lower end of the baby sitters they occasionally help in depositing money into guardian co-signed savings accounts.
5. Veterinary assistants
It seems people are willing to pay roughly as much to have their children watched at home as they are to have their pets watched at the vet’s office by veterinary assistants, who make on average $11.12 an hour.
6. Agricultural workers
Farm workers, who harvest crops and run heavy machinery, average $9.09 an hour. That’s $18,910 a year.
7. Bartenders
In many states you have to be 21 years old to buy alcohol and 18 years old to serve alcohol. But those legal age restrictions have little to do with hourly pay for bartenders, who earn $9.09 an hour on average.
It should also be noted that waiters, cashiers and cooks also made this list at that hourly rate.
8. Child-care workers
And here’s the kicker. If you work in a child day-care center you will get paid significantly less ($9.38 an hour) than a baby sitter who does many of the same things in a child’s home.
Child-care workers could possibly fare better as self-employed contractors.
Email: mjelalian@deseretnews.com