Wages for Housework

Before going any further, it’s probably wise to take gender out of the question. I was surprised to see the BBC and others refer to housework as the job of a ‘housewife’. That point aside, what does the poll of 4,000 housewives for networking website alljoinon.com tell us?

The website said a housewife would earn almost £30,000 a year if ‘she’ was employed to do all the same errands. Some 71% of those polled agreed that successfully running the family home was a full-time job. I can believe it.

• An average mum would spend 273 minutes every day looking after the children, according to the poll. Based on an hourly rate of £8, a nanny would earn £36.80 a day for the same job.
• Cleaning and tidying for 71 minutes would net a cleaner £7.10 a day. For more than an hour of cooking a head chef would get £17.30.
• Fourteen minutes making the beds is worth £1.29 for a chambermaid, and a kitchen assistant would be paid £2.57 for a housewife’s typical 28 minutes of washing up.
• The poll said the average mum trawled the family finances for 39 minutes, which would cost £12.50 if an accountant did it. A taxi driver would earn £2.53 for the 23 minutes of ferrying children around, and a mystery shopper £2.10 for the 18 minutes a day of grocery shopping.

Economists would tend to see domestic relationships in terms of opportunity cost and comparative advantage. Read Andrew Threadgold’s excellent blog The Fairer Sex to pick up the story.