polled 600 Floridians and found that nearly half are having a hard time paying necessary bills because of inflation.There’s one industry heavily impacted by inflation, but it won’t shock parents: babysitting.
I remember making about $10 an hour to babysit in high school. The new nation’s average rate is $20.57 an hour for one child and $23.25 an hour for two children, according to an analysis from UrbanSitter. Mother Tina Peckham never stops moving with her two boys, 2-year-old Austin and 5-year-old Archer, so that downtime alone with her husband is cherished.
“We try to do date nights once a month -- that’s the goal. We don’t have family here, so it’s finding time to get away and does it make sense financially?” Peckham said. “For dinner and a movie and not even at a crazy restaurant, just basic, is $150-200, and babysitting costs are a good half of that.”
Advance Homecare Placements owner Sharyn Edmiston says that’s a steal compared to what nanny rates are going for. “They’re probably looking at $24 an hour at a minimum, and if we’re bringing someone in from somewhere else, it could be much higher than that. We’re seeing rates from $22 to as much as $35 an hour,” Edmiston said.“When you get into three or four, we’ve done some placements recently where it was $80,000-110,000 a year,” Edmiston said.“And it makes it difficult from an agency perspective passing that along to a consumer and explaining that,” Edmiston said.
The struggle is real.