Sunday is Mother’s Day, when moms will be honored with breakfast in bed, flowers and other gifts. The state of Georgia has no presents for working moms, however, according to a new analysis by WalletHub.
Despite climbing from No. 42 in 2020 to No. 39 in 2021, Georgia once again fell in the financial website’s annual analysis of the best and worst states for working moms.
For its study, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across three key dimensions, using 17 relevant metrics: child care — including quality and cost — and pediatricians per capita; professional opportunities, including gender pay gap, median women’s salary and ratio of female to male executives; and work-life balance, including parental leave policy and average length of a woman’s work week. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for working moms.
When the scores were tallied, the top three states for working mothers were in New England, with Massachusetts finishing on top, followed by Connecticut and Rhode Island. Minnesota finished fourth, with Wisconsin rounding out the top five.
Georgia ranked No. 43, scoring 37.46, making it the ninth worst state in the nation for working moms. This is quite a slide for the Peach State, which had shown improvement in 2021.
In each key dimension, Georgia ranked No. 31 in child care, No. 30 in professional opportunities and, for the fifth year in a row, last place for work-life balance.
Among the relevent metrics, we finished:
- 21st – day care quality
- 33rd – pediatricians per capita
- 41st – gender pay gap (women’s earnings as percentage of men’s)
- 45th – ratio of female to male executives
- 19th – female unemployment rate
- 34th – parental leave policy score
- 45th – average length of woman’s work week (in hours)
- 34th – percentage of single-mother families in poverty
But chin up, moms, because things could be worse. Louisiana, for example, which came in last place with a score of just 27.38, ranked No. 50 in both child care and professional opportunity. And Mississippi, which was No. 50 overall with a score of just 29.14, ranked last for opportunity and No. 49 for work-life balance.
You can check out the full report on WalletHub.com.
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