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Taking care of loved ones is an essential part of our families and communities. But while unpaid care is often done with love, it is labor nevertheless – labor critical to the functioning of our families, neighborhoods and our economy. Yet despite its importance, U.S. policies have historically undervalued and under supported care work, failing to provide paid leave, affordable child care, and home- and community-based services. Without these key benefits, caregiving responsibilities unduly cut into families’ budgets, affect people’s ability to join the workforce and create unnecessary stress, all of which have repercussions for their families, as well the economy as a whole.

Our analysis of 2023 American Time Use Survey data shines a light on the extent of unpaid care people in the U.S. are doing, highlighting not only how critical this work is to our economy, but also the inequitable distribution of this labor. We find that each person 15 and older in the U.S. averages nearly 245 hours caring for and helping family, friends and loved ones each year, including things like getting their children ready for bed, watching a niece after school, or taking an older neighbor to the doctor. And we estimate that if this unpaid care work were compensated at the rate of our underpaid professional care workforce, it would be valued at more than $1 trillion a year. Two-thirds (65 percent) of this unpaid care work is done by women, who spend an average of nearly 296 hours each a year on caregiving, equating to more than $643 billion in unpaid care work – $4,650 in unpaid care work each year for each woman in the U.S.

Asian women and Latinas both spend about an hour a day on average providing unpaid care – more than any other group. That means Asian women provide $5,920 in unpaid care per capita each year – and the total value of Asian women’s unpaid care is more than $55 billion annually. Latinas provide $5,510 in unpaid care per capita each year, and the total value of their unpaid care is $133 billion. The amount of time spent on caring for people they live with is especially high for Asian women and Latinas, likely due in part to the fact that Asian and Latino families are especially likely to live in multigenerational households. Black women and white women, who average among the most time of any group caring for people outside of their household, are providing $4,250 and $4,540 total in unpaid care per capita each year, respectively. Black women provide $80 billion in unpaid care and white women $476 billion each year. Men provide about $3,040 per capita in unpaid care, less than all groups of women.

Staggering as these figures are, they are conservative estimates of the value of the unpaid care. The value of care in this analysis is based on the far-too-low wages of child care workers and home health and personal care aides – jobs that pay well below a living wage. The devaluation of both paid and unpaid caregiving is rooted in the sexist idea that these jobs are “women’s work” (and that women’s work is less-than and just how it is), and racist structures and practices that too often limit people of color to the lowest-status and lowest-paid work. As National Partnership President Jocelyn Frye writes, “women’s work’ has often involved care work, disproportionately performed by women of color for little or no pay. Such work is frequently seen as not having real value even though it is essential to the sustainability and well-being of families.”

The Caregiving Gap

While both men and women provide essential care and support, women do one-and-a-half times as much of this work as men. Women report spending 49 minutes a day caring for and helping children, other family members and people outside of their home, whereas men average a bit under 32 minutes. This gap means that women average 17 more additional minutes of caregiving compared to men each day, amounting to an additional 102 hours of care annually – nearly 3 full work weeks a year. The caregiving gap persists across groups of women, with Asian women, white women, Black women and Latinas all spending more time providing care compared to men overall.

Large as these totals are, they include only the time that people spend primarily focused on caregiving. Parents and other caregivers are champion multitaskers, keeping an eye on kids or sick loved ones while working or doing household chores, meaning the total time involved in caregiving is even higher.

This caregiving gap reflects the reality that overall women are both more likely to be caregivers and to spend more time providing care. More than a quarter (25.6 percent) of all women report caring for household members, compared to 18.2 percent of men, while 9.6 percent women and 7.4 percent of men provide care for non-household members. Among caregivers, women spend more time caring for people in their own household, including for household children, while men spend slightly more time caring for people outside of their household.

These gaps are not because men don’t care about care. In fact, more than three-quarters of men agree that care work inside the home is as important as paid work outside the home, and about nine in ten fathers believe that caregiving should be divided equally between men and women. Yet, although fathers are spending more time caring for children than they did a decade ago, a lack of supportive policies and persistent gendered stereotypes about who makes a “good” employee and who is “good” at caregiving continue to hold us all back, both at home and at work. Gender inequities and stereotypes about caregiving mean that women are more likely to suffer caregiving-related discrimination in the workplace, and also contribute to men’s experience with caregiving discrimination as well.

But research shows that caregiving policies increase gender equity in caregiving and in paid work. The reality is a strong majority of voters need and want policies that support their caregiving responsibilities, with the vast majority of Black women, Latinas, and Asian American and Pacific Islander women citing caregiving policies as very or extremely important priorities. We celebrate efforts to truly value workers’ time and labor like the recent update to the federal overtime rule, and call on policymakers to take the next step by passing major national investments in paid leave, child care and home- and community-based services.

Methods note: Analysis is based on primary activities of the civilian population ages 15 and older analyzing time spent caring for and helping household and non-household members. People younger than 15 may be providing care. People in this analysis may also be providing care as a secondary activity while performing another primary activity such as cooking or watching TV. See the American Time Use Survey Technical Note for additional information. Latinas may be of any race and all racial groups include people who are Hispanic but do not include multiracial people to match the published Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis. Analysis is the value of care is based on the midpoint ($15.74/hr) between mean wages for child care workers ($15.42/hr) and home health or personal care aides ($16.05/hr), multiplied by the civilian population ages 15 and older.

The authors are grateful to Anushey Ahmed, Mettabel Law, Sharita Gruberg and Gail Zuagar for their important contributions to this piece.