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Comment by jurassic | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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