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How much is spent on babysitting annually in the US?
Hi there! Thanks so much for coming to Wonder with your question about babysitting services and the annual spend on this type of child care. As a mom of a toddler and baby, I was curious to see how our babysitting expenses fit in with the national averages!
In summary, short term child care, a.k.a. babysitting, represents approximately 10% of the overall childcare market in the US, which includes babysitters, nannies, daycare, preschools, and early childhood education; babysitting is valued at approximately $2-3B. The average cost is approximately $14 per hour in 2015 and the average annual spend is $462 per family in 2010. However, as we'll see, one set of frequency/cost statistics suggests that these numbers (other than the per hour rate) may be very much on the low side.
BABYSITTING MARKET SIZE
Since babysitting is largely an informal economy, firm figures were somewhat difficult to come by. However, we can try to estimate the total market. According to the SittingAround.com 2010 Trends in Babysitting report, the average family spends $462 per year on babysitting. Using US Census Bureau information, we know that there are approximately 35 million households with children under 18 in the United States. If we multiple 35 million by $462, that gives us $16.2 billion. However, this number is likely far too high, as many families would be inclined to leave an older sibling home with the younger children. There is no legal age for babysitters, though many websites on the topic recommend age 16 as a minimum. It is also not clear what socioeconomic groups were addressed by the survey -- families with children who don't use paid babysitters at all were likely not included in the averages. I hesitate to throw out a number because of these unknowns, but if I had to estimate, I would use the range of $5 billion as a ballpark figure. I'll discuss it more below, but according to IBIS World, nannies and babysitters make up approximately 29.8% of the "nannies, maids, and gardeners" market -- approximately $5.4B between the two of them, so we can assume that our calculations are very high and the real babysitting number is closer to $2-3B.
PER FAMILY FIGURES
As mentioned above, the average family spends $462 per year on babysitting. According to the SittingAround report, "hourly rates for paid babysitters vary greatly depending on location, and range from $4 all the way up to $20 per hour. The most commonly paid rate is $10 per hour." However, the average rate according to Care.com is $13.44 per hour, and this Urban Sitter study considers that cheap, citing $14.91 for one child -- the difference may be due to inflation from 2010 to 2015.
If we calculate this backward, that would amount to approximately 33-46 hours of babysitting per year (using $10 and $14 as our per-hour range) -- or about 3-4 hours per month. Three-four hours per month would be, on average, one date night -- which fits this second, undated Urban Sitter data point that states 33% of parents hire a sitter 1-2 times per month (and an additional 32% hire one 4-6 times per year). However, according to the more detailed Urban Sitter study cited above, parents are getting sitters more often than that -- 33% say once a week or more -- and 19% are spending over $5000 per year, which suggests that unless this survey is only polling upper class and upper middle class families, there is a bit of a disconnect between the SittingAround and IBIS data and the statistics presented by Urban Sitter.
MARKET SHARE
To find the percentage of the market that babysitting takes up, we'll need to do a bit of work to find the other segments of the market.
First, for nannies, IBIS World reports the total revenue for nannies, maids, and gardeners hired as personal staff to be approximately $18 billion as mentioned above, with nannies and babysitters taking up approximately $5.4B together. Regardless of how they break-out, we know for our overall market size that this figure can be used for the two combined.
For day care, childcare, and pre-school, according to IBIS, in Sept 2015 the day care industry total revenue was $48 billion. The report clarifies that the industry includes preschool education, but does not include kindergarten education or in-home nanny services. To further break that down, I was able to find a third IBIS study, from February 2015, that found the early childhood learning centers industry total revenue to be approximately $7 billion. It appears there may be some overlap here in that both figures include preschool, so I would suggest that together, these categories comprise a market of about $50B.
Combining these two pieces of information, we have the following estimates for types of child care:
~ Babysitting and nannies -- $5.4B
~ Day care, preschool, and early childhood learning -- $50B
That would give us babysitting as $5.4B of $54.4B -- a approximately 10% of the total child care market as defined here.
I hope that helps! Thanks for using Wonder.