Florida Is One Of The Best States For Working Moms: Study

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, the folks at WalletHub wanted to find out which states provide the best support for working moms and which ones don’t. When the numbers were crunched, Florida didn’t quite make the Top 10 best list, but it didn’t fall too short from the mark at number 12.

“In order to help ease the burden on an underappreciated segment of the population, WalletHub’s analysts compared the attractiveness of each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to a working mother,” WalletHub’s Diana Popa explained in an email. “We did so using 13 key metrics such as median women’s salary, female unemployment rate and day-care quality.”

Florida’s scores on the metrics were a mixed bag. The Sunshine State, for example, ranked 18th in the nation for gender pay gap and 19th for the ratio of female executives to male executives. When it comes to child care costs adjusted based on a woman’s median salary, however, Florida came in dead last.

The study was meant to cast a spotlight on the plight working mothers face in many states.

“Progress appears to be taking shape at different rates across the nation,” WalletHub explained on its website. “Not only do parental leave policies and other legal-support systems vary by state, but the quality of infrastructure – from cost-effective day care to public schools – is also far from uniform.”

Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut, North Dakota and Massachusetts were ranked one through five, respectively, as the best states for working moms. Nevada came in dead last wit Alabama and South Carolina just above it.

According to WalletHub, women today comprise nearly half of the American workforce, and slightly less than three quarters of them are single mothers with young children. But women still earn only $0.79 for every dollar that men make, and only 4 percent of S&P 500 companies’ chief executives are female.

To check out the full study, visit WalletHub online.

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