Mom Salaries Decline in 2008

Salary.com said in a press release that it revised the calculation to reflect the impact of company size on mom’s compensation and provides a more complete view using total cash compensation for the mom job. Previously, the survey was based on the national median base salary for all company sizes (see Survey: Stay-At-Home Moms Get 3% Raise in 2007 ).

“Smaller organizations typically pay less. By using data for companies with fewer than 25 employees-offset slightly by the addition of annual bonuses-we saw a net decrease in U.S mom’s pay of nearly $21K from 2007. We believe this is a valuable way to help educate the average person about the factors affecting compensation and how employers determine pay,” said Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com.

According to the announcement, the primary driver of mom’s six-figure salary, however, remains the amount of overtime worked. This year, mom’s overtime averaged 54.4 hours per week as Stay-at-Home Moms work a 94.4 hour “work week” and Working Moms reported an average 54.6 hour “mom work week” in addition to their paying jobs.

The job titles that best matched a mom’s definition of her work included housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, laundry machine operator, computer operator, psychologist, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive officer, and janitor. In the Mom Salary Survey, 18,000 moms quantified their hours worked in each role for a typical week.

The survey data has been incorporated into the MomSalaryWizard, a tool on the Web site where users can personalize the survey data to reflect time spent per job in an average week and print a personalized paycheck.