Where Family Caregivers Would Earn the Most if They Were Paid

Disclaimer: General educational research only — not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures are survey-based estimates with the limits explained in the methodology. Verify with official sources and a qualified professional before making decisions.

Estate Planning Data & Research → Where Family Caregivers Would Earn the Most if They Were Paid

If you help a parent, spouse or other relative with bathing, meals, pills, rides to the doctor or paying bills, you are doing work that people get paid to do. Most family caregivers never see a paycheck for it.

So we asked a simple question: if you were paid what a home health or personal care aide earns in your state, what would your time be worth?

We used the federal government’s latest wage survey for home health and personal care aides (May 2025) and AARP’s newest state estimates of how many hours family caregivers put in (2024). Every state and Washington, D.C. is included.

While you plan for care, make sure the legal papers are in place too: a will, a power of attorney and a health care directive. See whether you need a will, a living trust or both.

Key findings

• The same hour of care is worth twice as much in some states as in others. The typical (median) home health and personal care aide earns $22.95 an hour in Washington but $10.83 an hour in Louisiana. Nationally, the median is $17.21 an hour, or $35,800 a year for full-time work.
• Highest-paying states for aide work: Washington ($22.95), Oregon ($21.35), Rhode Island ($21.00), District of Columbia ($20.53) and Vermont ($20.00).
• Lowest-paying states: Louisiana ($10.83), Mississippi ($11.47), Texas ($11.65), Arkansas ($13.30) and Oklahoma ($13.32). In 12 states, the median aide makes less than $15 an hour.
• Per caregiver, Arizona comes out on top. AARP’s figures work out to about 19.7 hours of care per Arizona caregiver per week. At Arizona’s aide median of $17.51, that is roughly $18,000 a year per caregiver. Alaska (about $17,900), Hawaii ($17,400), Oregon ($17,300) and Washington ($17,100) follow. (AARP’s hours for Alaska and Hawaii are based on regional averages; see the note under the table.) At the low end are Iowa (about $8,800), Wisconsin ($9,500), Texas ($9,500), West Virginia ($10,000) and Mississippi ($10,300).
• Nationwide, it adds up to about $852 billion. That is AARP’s 49.5 billion hours of family care in 2024 multiplied by the national aide median wage. AARP’s own estimate is higher, $1.01 trillion, because AARP also counts nursing wages and what families pay agencies (more on that below).

Full state table

The table is sorted by the median hourly wage for home health and personal care aides. “Yearly value per caregiver” uses AARP’s state care hours divided by AARP’s state caregiver count, multiplied by the aide median wage, and is rounded to the nearest $100.

* AARP marks these as smaller states. For them, AARP estimated hours per caregiver at the Census division level, not from the state’s own survey answers, so the per-caregiver figure is less precise.

Source: Family Estate Guide analysis of BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, SOC 31-1120; AARP Public Policy Institute, Valuing the Invaluable 2026, Table A1.

Why the numbers differ so much from state to state

Two things drive this table.

1. What aides are paid. Aide pay in a state is shaped by things like the state’s minimum wage, how much the state Medicaid program pays home care agencies (Medicaid pays for a large share of home care), and local living costs. This article does not measure how much each of those matters; it simply reports what aides were paid in May 2025.

2. How many hours families put in. AARP’s estimates of care hours per caregiver range from under 10 hours a week in Iowa to almost 20 in Arizona, Louisiana and Tennessee. A state can have low aide pay but long caregiving hours. Louisiana is an example: lowest pay in the country, but about 19.7 hours a week per caregiver. Iowa is the reverse: middle-of-the-pack pay, fewest hours.

The per-caregiver dollar figure is an average across everyone AARP counted as a caregiver during the year. Some people help a few hours a month. Others give round-the-clock care. Your own number could be far higher or lower.

What this means for your family

Putting a dollar figure on care is not about sending your mother a bill. It is useful for a few practical reasons:

It shows what you would pay if you had to hire help. If a family caregiver gets sick, burns out or moves away, someone has to fill those hours. Know the going rate in your state before that happens. Our companion piece, Can You Afford Long-Term Care on Your State’s Median Retirement Income?, runs the numbers for 44 hours of aide care a week.

It can support a fair arrangement between siblings. When one adult child does most of the caregiving, families sometimes agree to pay that person or to leave them a larger share later. A written caregiver agreement (sometimes called a personal care agreement) and an updated will or trust can keep that from turning into a fight after a parent dies. Talk about it early. Our guide to the family conversation has ideas for starting.

It matters for Medicaid. If a parent might need Medicaid to pay for long-term care, payments to family members need to be handled carefully. Money given away without a clear, fair-value agreement can look like a gift and may cause a waiting period for coverage. Rules vary by state, so check with your state Medicaid agency or an elder law attorney. Also look at Medicaid estate recovery in your state. It affects what may be left for heirs.

The caregiver needs legal authority, not just good intentions. A family member managing money or talking to doctors usually needs a durable power of attorney and a healthcare directive. Without them, families can end up in court asking for guardianship. If your parents are getting older and none of this is in place, start with My Parents Are Getting Older: Where Do I Start? or, if time is short, We Need a Plan Now.

Methodology

Wages. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates (published May 2026), state file state_M2025_dl.xlsx inside oesm25st.zip, and national file oesm25nat.zip. Occupation: SOC 31-1120, Home Health and Personal Care Aides. BLS publishes this as one combined occupation; it does not publish separate state wages for 31-1121 (home health aides) and 31-1122 (personal care aides). We used the median hourly wage (H_MEDIAN) and median annual wage (A_MEDIAN, which BLS bases on 2,080 hours a year). All 50 states and DC had published values; nothing was suppressed. OEWS covers wage and salary workers only. It leaves out self-employed workers and people hired directly by households.

• https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm25st.zip
• https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm25nat.zip
• https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes311120.htm

Caregiving hours. AARP Public Policy Institute, Valuing the Invaluable 2026: Family Caregivers’ Contribution Reaches $1 Trillion (Houser, Caldera, Flinn and Choula, March 2026), Appendix Table A1, “State Estimates of the Number of Caregivers, Care Hours, and Economic Value of Family Caregiving, 2024.” We used AARP’s published, rounded numbers of caregivers of adults 18+ and care hours (millions) exactly as printed. AARP notes its state estimates do not add up exactly to its national total, so for the U.S. row we used AARP’s national figures (59 million caregivers, 49.5 billion hours). AARP cautions against comparing these state figures with its earlier reports.

• https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/ltss/family-caregiving/valuing-the-invaluable-2026-update/
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.26419/ppi.00402.001

Our calculations.

• Hours per caregiver per year = AARP care hours ÷ AARP number of caregivers. Per week = that ÷ 52.
• Yearly value per caregiver = hours per caregiver per year × state aide median hourly wage.
• Total state value at aide pay = AARP care hours × state aide median hourly wage.

Why our total is lower than AARP’s. AARP values each hour using a mix that is 75% wages (state minimum wage and several occupational wages, including nursing wages for medical tasks) and 25% the private-pay price of home care. We used only the aide median wage, a simpler and more conservative rate. In every state, AARP’s rate is higher than the aide median, by $1.82 an hour (Indiana) up to $7.82 (California).

Different years. AARP’s hours are for 2024; the wages are for May 2025. We did not adjust for inflation.

The full CSV is available in the Downloads section above.

Frequently asked questions

Can family members actually get paid for caregiving?

In many states, yes, mostly through Medicaid home and community-based programs that let the person receiving care hire a relative. Some veterans’ programs and long-term care insurance policies also allow it. Rules differ by state and program. This article does not track which programs exist where.

Why use home health and personal care aide pay?

It is the closest paid job to what most family caregivers do: help with bathing, dressing, eating, moving around and household tasks. It is also measured the same way in every state. Many caregivers also handle medical tasks or money management that would cost more to hire out, so this is a conservative rate.

Is this what an agency would charge me?

No. These are wages paid to the aide. When you hire through an agency, the hourly rate you pay also covers the agency’s costs, so expect to pay more than the wage shown here.

Why are the per-caregiver numbers rounded?

They are built from AARP’s rounded state counts, and AARP’s state estimates come from survey samples that are much smaller than the national one. Read them as ballpark figures, not exact amounts.

Cite this data

Journalists and bloggers are welcome to use these figures with a link back to this page. The full CSV is free to download.

Published October 1, 2026. Data vintage: BLS OEWS May 2025 (released May 2026); AARP Valuing the Invaluable 2026 (2024 state estimates). Editorial standards.