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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

With daycares closed, there are a lot of people working from home and trying to watch their kids at the same time. You'd need to sort out with them (and any housemates) about what level of contact to have outside your (now expanded) bubble, but people need childcare badly.

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Daycare may require state certification (just beware).

With so many kids homeschooled, tutoring the last couple of months was probably a gold mine. Many parents run into a hard wall with respect to math and science and can no longer help their kids.

Watching the kids of a single family is being a nanny, not a daycare, and at least in the US doesn't require a license or certification.

I would guess this varies by state. (IANAL.)

What state do you think does? High-regulation states like MA and CA don't, and it would very much surprise me if others did. (I'm also not a lawyer.)

Sorry, I was unclear. I was guessing that low-regulation states might allow watching the kids of more than one family.

Watching their kids at their house is being a nanny. You only mentioned people need childcare. Having kids dropped off at your house requires at least registration in Texas, and if it's 4-6, requires certification.

That also comes with a huge amount of liability.

Childcare is a great answer. We pay our baby sitter $120/day, and we treat her like royalty because she’s good it at and she actually has a great hourly rate for the area ($15/hr).

It’s working out really well for everyone involved. We may just keep her on even when daycare opens back up.

Wow that’s a lot of money, where I’m from I see the cost for full time nanny at like $450 per _month_ (plus meals).

My wife, who is out of work, is providing emergency childcare to some friends of ours for $20/hr. People are really desperate for this and I'm sure she could make more if she wasn't just doing it as a favor for our friends.

If you do something for a friend ... and take money, is it really fair to call it a favour?

If it’s below market rate; sure, why not?

Is $20/hour below the market rate in U.S.?

It feels above-market to me, but it probably depends on the number of kids and where you are. We're paying $17/hour for daytime child care for one two-year-old in the north Atlanta suburbs. We've historically paid evening "date night" babysitters $60 for 4-5 hours, so $12-15 an hour, but that's an easier job because the kid's asleep a big portion of the time.

I don’t know, but the US is a huge country with some very poor parts and some very rich parts. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was below market rate in Silicon Valley.

Here's a survey from urbansitter.com: https://blog.urbansitter.com/2019-babysitting-rates/

$20 seems to be above-market everywhere for one kid, and everywhere except SF and NY for two kids. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's finer-grained variation - sitters probably cost more in the richer parts of a metro area than in the poorer parts of the same metro area.

Most data on the market rate predates the pandemic. Right now there is basically no childcare available.

She was going to do it for free but they insisted on paying her.

If it isn't their profession/field and they don't need the money either way. Yeah I would still consider it a favor.

I pay the people who house sit and watch my pets, I still consider it a favor in addition to paying them.

I’m not sure how it’s compared with market rate but friends are usually more trustable or at least making people feel that way.

Seconding this. When our day care closed we originally sent our 2-year-old to her grandparents; when they couldn't take it any more (she can be a handful!) we brought her back. Since her teachers from day care were also out of work we called the one she gets along with best, and that's working splendidly. Unfortunately this costs more than day care, but we're spending less normally just because there aren't as many opportunities to spend money, so it's okay.

Licensing might be an issue, as some people have mentioned. More importantly, though, I wouldn't trust my kid to someone who doesn't have experience with kids. So this may or may not be an option for your friend.

Outschool does something similar and seems like it can make you some money.

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