(Part 10 in a series that looks at how much we over- and under-research caregiving, leaving family caregivers without effective support and impactful programs. We’re also looking at the economic impact when we don’t effectively support family caregivers.)
Every family caregiver runs an operation. You triage. You coordinate across people who don’t talk to each other and systems that don’t connect. You make decisions with incomplete information, under time pressure, with someone’s life on the line. You manage budgets, schedules, crises, difficult news, heart-breaking situations and your own exhaustion, usually all in the same afternoon.
You are the CEO of your caregiving experience. No one hired you. No one trained you. And no one’s paying you anything close to what a CEO makes.
Where’s Our Hero Rate?
The organizations in this field have beautiful language for you. The Elizabeth Dole Foundation calls military and veteran caregivers “Hidden Heroes,” and calls their children “Hidden Helpers.” AARP calls all 63 million of us an “invisible workforce.” Jason Resendez, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, says we “cannot continue to treat family caregiving as invisible labor.”
I’ve written about this before — about the conference where a sponsor wanted family caregivers to hold signs reading “Cook” and “Chauffeur” for a photo booth, and about why I think calling us “invisible” actually diminishes the work instead of honoring it. Today I want to take that argument one step further.
I want to ask a different question. If we are these heroes who deserve better, what’s our value?
I also wanted to know: How do the organizations that study and advocate for you actually value your hour? And, what’s their hourly rate?
Three Organizations, Three Different Numbers for Your Hour
The AARP Public Policy Institute’s “Valuing the Invaluable” report — co-developed with the National Alliance for Caregiving — just released its newest update in March 2026. It now values a family caregiver’s hour at $20.41 on average, adjusted by state: $14.12 an hour if you’re caregiving in Louisiana, $27.05 if you’re in Washington.
But it’s not just adjusted by state. Buried in the methodology, AARP made a bigger change this year: your rate now depends on which task you’re doing. Helping with finances or meals gets one rate. Helping someone bathe or dress gets another. Medical and nursing tasks — injections, catheters, wound care — get a third, higher rate. Three tiers, blended with state minimum wage and the private-pay cost of home care, recalculated for every state.
In other words: AARP didn’t just adjust for your zip code. They adopted the same task-by-task tiering RAND already uses for military and veteran caregivers — valuing you differently depending on which chore is in front of you in any given hour, not on the skill you bring to all of them.
RAND, in research commissioned by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation for military and veteran caregivers, took the same kind of approach, just built differently. Instead of one number, they built a tiered range based on which specific task you happen to do within a given hour. Minimum wage if it looks like basic assistance. Nursing-assistant pay if it looks a little more clinical. Registered-nurse pay only for the hours that involve injections, catheter changes, oxygen administration. Add it up across the country and you get a range from $119 billion to $485 billion a year, depending entirely on which tier you land in.
RAND’s floor tier is pegged to minimum wage, state by state. In roughly 20 states, that floor is still the federal minimum wage: $7.25 an hour. Yes, a large national caregiving organization’s own methodology treats some of your hours as worth $7.25.
Both AARP and RAND are wrong for the same reason. A visiting nurse doesn’t get docked to home-health-aide pay because she spent twenty minutes helping someone get dressed instead of giving an injection. Her rate reflects her skill, full stop, and not which specific task is in front of her in any given hour.
Family caregivers operate the same way. You never do “low-skill” work, even when the task looks simple, because you’re the only one in the room who can read what’s actually happening, decide what matters, and adjust in real time. That’s a skill. It doesn’t turn off just because the task appears easier. It’s also important to note: your skill makes complicated tasks look easier to anyone else watching you.
You Always Operate at Your Highest Skill Level
That’s why our own Caregiver Savings Calculator uses one flat rate for everything, everywhere. If your work aligns with a Care Systems Navigator, then every hour is calculated at $55 an hour, the market rate for a Care Systems Navigator. We landed on your value using the same logic as a visiting nurse’s reimbursement rate. We used one rate, regardless of which task is in front of you or which state you live in, because the skill behind the work doesn’t change from task to task. The $55 per hour rate came up most often, in nearly 8 out of 10 of the 478 responses we’ve collected so far.
Across every response, the rate actually applied averages $52.80 an hour. Plug that into real reported hours and the average annual value of a family caregiver’s unpaid work comes out to $162,522. The rate is wages only, no benefits, no paid vacation, no bonus, no overtime pay, no holiday pay, nothing extra. Family caregivers don’t get those either.
One more number worth keeping in mind. Our calculator uses one flat rate, on purpose, because we apply the same logic behind a visiting nurse’s pay or a CEO’s salary. But I ran the numbers a different way, just to see. Across our latest 478 responses, family caregivers report working an average of 58 hours a week. Nearly 44% of you work more than 40 hours a week, and for that group, the average climbs to almost 106 hours.
If you apply the most basic protection in U.S. labor law — time-and-a-half overtime pay after 40 hours — the average annual value of a family caregiver’s unpaid work doesn’t stay at $162,522. It climbs to $204,561. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s the same hours you already told us you work, valued the way any other overtime-eligible worker in this country would be paid for them. We’re not changing our calculator. The flat $55/hour rate is still the right way to value the skill — that doesn’t change task to task. Overtime is a different question; it’s not about skill, it’s about hours, and wage law already has an answer for that one.
It’s worth knowing: even the most conservative wage-law standard says you’re owed more than $40,000 a year beyond what we already count. This is exactly why calculating your own value matters — not as an exercise but as proof. Every number above came from family caregivers who took five minutes to put their own hours and work into our calculator instead of letting someone else’s research define their worth.
If you’ve already done it, send it to another family caregiver who hasn’t. The more of us we count, the harder our number is to ignore. We’re closing in on $1 billion in documented lifetime value and every response moves us closer to bringing this data in front of Congress.
The Value of the Valuers
The Elizabeth Dole Foundation’s CEO, Steve Schwab, made $334,007 last year, all in. That’s roughly $161 an hour at a standard 40-hour week. One flat rate, by the way, the same way his own paycheck works every week regardless of which task he’s doing that day. His own organization’s commissioned research won’t extend that same logic to family caregivers.
Ai-jen Poo, President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and director of Caring Across Generations — an organization built around making care work visible and valued — made $313,649 last year, including other compensation. That’s about $151 an hour. Her organization’s entire mission argues that care work deserves to be paid what it’s worth. Her own paycheck reflects that argument.
The Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers — before it folded into the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program in 2025 — paid its Senior Director of Caregiver & Mental Health Policy $216,346 in her final year, about $104 an hour. Its CEO made $196,253, about $94 an hour.
The National Alliance for Caregiving’s President & CEO made $201,250 in reportable compensation, plus other compensation bringing the total to $219,484 — somewhere between $97 and $105 an hour. That’s roughly five times the rate his own organization assigns to family caregivers.
The researchers building these reports aren’t valued at $20 an hour either. The national median salary for a sociologist — the closest government job category to “caregiving researcher” — is $101,690 a year, about $49 an hour. Sociologists working specifically at grantmaking and advocacy organizations, like the ones producing these reports, earn a median of $135,210, about $65 an hour. Even the people running the numbers are worth more, by their own field’s accounting, than the number they assigned to you.
My own compensation falls far below $150,000. I invest a lot of my revenue back into my business because I believe in my work. When I get to $150,000, I’ll let you know.
Leaders in our space deserve to be paid a fair-market rate for running organizations with large budgets and real responsibility. They’re paid at a rate that reflects the size and responsibility of what they run. They advocate, often passionately, for family caregivers.
Yet the rate they advocate for us doesn’t reflect the size or responsibility of what we run.
These organizations also regularly reference family caregivers as invisible and hidden. What if their own advocacy efforts actually hide the family caregiver’s true value?
It’s why I use the term “non-reimbursed.” Family caregivers are non-reimbursed professionals doing the hardest work within the 19 Caregiving Systems and yet the only system without a reimbursement rate.
Every Hour of Your Time is Valuable
Every one of these leaders gets paid one rate. Nobody docks their hourly pay because Tuesday’s tasks looked easier than Monday’s. Their compensation reflects who they are and what they’re capable of, not a task-by-task audit of their calendar.
Family caregivers deserve the same logic and the market already prices it that way. That’s where our $55/hour rate comes from. Both AARP and RAND now try to account for skill by tracking tasks. Task-tracking is exactly the wrong way to measure a family caregiver’s value, because you never operate below your full skill level, no matter what the task in front of you looks like.
I don’t think the answer is a range, and I don’t think it’s your zip code either.
A non-reimbursed family caregiver’s hour isn’t worth a different number depending on whether you fill a pill organizer, manage a feeding tube, or advocate effectively to appeal and overturn an insurance denial. It isn’t worth a different number depending on which state you live in, either. It’s worth what your skill is worth, full stop — the same logic a visiting nurse’s paycheck already runs on.
You’re the CEO of your caregiving experience. CEOs don’t get paid by the task and they don’t get a pay cut for living in the wrong state.
What value do you put on your work? How do you feel about a salary of $160,000 per year? I’d love to hear from you.
Resources
- Put a dollar amount on your caregiving work. When you calculate your value as a family caregiver, you provide us with the insights that help us effectively advocate for and about you. The calculation takes less than 5 minutes and you’ll leave with your own insights into your worth and a social media card to share. When you share your social media card, be sure to share your story. Calculate your value: https://www.careyearsacademy.com/caregiving-resources/tools/costs/save/
- Want to know what it costs your community when family caregivers don’t get the help and support they need — and stop spending within their communities? Calculate the impact here: careyearsacademy.com/caregiving-resources/tools/costs/
