Skip to content
Hugin
Hugin / Topic

caregiving

Every record this desk has filed under caregiving, newest first, each with the number of sources it can still show you.

2 recordsSeptember 17, 2026 – September 17, 2026All topics
  1. Commentary4 receipts4 min

    A fifth of the economy has no earnings record behind it. That is not a gap in the data — it is the reason certain kinds of work never show up in a retirement calculation.

    GAO priced unpaid household work at $5.6 to $6.0 trillion in 2024, about a fifth of GDP, done by 87.3 percent of people for an average of 3.72 hours a day. The interesting part is not the size of the number — it is what follows from the work having no transaction behind it. Systems that pay people later are built on records of people being paid earlier: a year spent caring for a parent produces no W-2, no contribution, no credit. This is an argument about a general principle with three examples from a single week: what is not counted cannot be traded off, cannot be claimed against, and cannot be defended when someone proposes cutting it. And the fix is never 'care more' — it is a category, a code, a line on a form.

    Also filed undermethodeconomymeasurementgao

  2. News2 receipts3 min

    GAO put a number on the cooking, cleaning and caring Americans do for free: at least $5.6 trillion in 2024, about a fifth of GDP, and none of it is in GDP.

    GAO's September 17 report estimates the national market value of unpaid household work — domestic tasks plus caregiving — at $5.6 to $6.0 trillion in 2024, 'equivalent to at least 19.2 to 20.2 percent of 2024 GDP'. Domestic tasks account for $4.3–4.4 trillion of that; caregiving for $1.1–1.4 trillion. On a typical day 87.3 percent of people did some of it, averaging about 3.72 hours. Women were 53.9 percent of the people doing it while being 51.2 percent of the population; women and married people spent more time on child care than men and unmarried people, while time spent caring for adults was similar across both splits. The estimate excludes secondary child care — watching a child while doing something else — so GAO says the real figure is higher. None of it appears in GDP, because GDP counts market transactions.

    Also filed undergaoeconomygdpunpaid-workstatistics

A record appears here because it carries caregiving in its own frontmatter. If a record you expected is missing, it was filed under a different subject — the full list is on the topics index.