Mother’s Day facts and figures for 2020: Best and worst states for working moms
May 08, 2020
Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and nearly 70 percent of moms with children under age 18 were working in 2019. In 2020, those numbers are decreasing, as data show that during the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment is rising faster for women than for men.
Working moms face an uphill battle in the workplace, as their average hourly wage is only 85 percent of what men make, and only 6 percent of S&P 500 companies’ chief executives are female.
Progress appears to be taking place at different rates across the nation. Parental leave policies and other legal support systems vary by state, and the quality of infrastructure — from cost-effective day care to public schools — differs.
To find the best and worst states for working moms, WalletHub, a personal finance website, compared states on 17 key metrics. Among the items compared were child care, professional opportunities, and work-life balance.
Some of the findings are:
Top 10 states
1. Massachusetts
2. Minnesota
3. Vermont
4. Connecticut
5. Washington, D.C.
6. New Jersey
7. Rhode Island
8. Maine
9. New Hampshire
10. Wisconsin
10 worst states
41. Arkansas
42. Georgia
43. Nevada
44. New Mexico
45. Oklahoma
46. Idaho
47. West Virginia
48. South Carolina
49. Alabama
50. Mississippi
51. Lousiana
Best day-care systems
1. New York
2. Washington
3. North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas – ties
Worst day-care systems
47. Alabama
48. Louisiana
49. California
50. Nebraska
51. Idaho
Lowest gender pay gap
1. California
2. Maine
3. District of Columbia, Nevada – tie
5. Vermont
Highest gender pay gap
47. Alabama
48. North Dakota
49. Rhode Island, Utah – tie
51. Wyoming
Highest female-executive to male-executive ratio
1. District of Columbia
2. South Dakota
3. Maine
4. Vermont
5. Rhode Island
Lowest female-executive to male-executive ratio
47. Texas
48. Mississippi
49. Alabama
50. South Carolina
51. Utah
For more information, see “2020’s Best and Worse States for Working Moms.”
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