Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$20 before COVID. Now I’m charging $25. Supply and demand.

Are you saying fewer babysitters are going to more homes, possibly spreading COVID? No thanks.

You could try to get the sitter to sign an exclusivity contract. Otherwise, I guess you’ll be staying home with the kids for a while.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. We're not in the DMV any more, and my 14-year-old makes $10 an hour for two awake children. I can't tell her this; she'll be sorry we moved!

We just moved to the dmv and our minimum wage in our previous jurisdiction was $7.25/hr. I’m going to have a really hard time grasping that a teen *deserves* $20/hr so they can sit on their ass and text for 2-3 hours.

“Deserves” has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s market rate like everything else. Why should a teen accept $10 an hour from you when he/she could get $20 with another family?

Exactly. And you also don't "deserve" a babysitter. You can negotiate for one, or make do.

Negotiation means supply and demand -- if the market rate is higher than you want to pay and there are plenty of gigs, good luck.

High schooler - $15-$17 depending on experience, # of awake hours, etc.

College kid - ~$20/hr

When I was a young single teacher in my early/mid 20s I babysat on the Hill for about $20/hr but other teachers I knew made $25.

We pay our high school aged sitter $15/ hr.


When I was in hs in the late 1990s I made $10

Anonymous wrote:We pay 25/hr for 3 kids. I made a buck an hour per child when I babysat as a teenager. Ugh.

This was me ! Buck an hour as a teenager. I was a mother's helper to a "healthy" family most summers. No TVin the house. No snack-y food in the house. I was so bored. I hated it.

I am a teacher now and do date-night sitting. I also charge $25/hr. Cash only. No longer bored. Having nothing to do is heaven for me, LOL.

I would pay a teen for casual babysitting like this. I would want them to have a cpr class under their belt and a basic first aid class. Aside from liking kids I don’t need anything else as far as a Nanny skill set which is different and not what I ( or OP) needs. $15 an hour is what we pay our sitter in moco.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. We're not in the DMV any more, and my 14-year-old makes $10 an hour for two awake children. I can't tell her this; she'll be sorry we moved!

We just moved to the dmv and our minimum wage in our previous jurisdiction was $7.25/hr. I’m going to have a really hard time grasping that a teen *deserves* $20/hr so they can sit on their ass and text for 2-3 hours.

“Deserves” has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s market rate like everything else. Why should a teen accept $10 an hour from you when he/she could get $20 with another family?

This is why people tell those coming from LCOL areas to look at EVERYTHING. Home prices, grocery prices, and yes -- labor prices, are all higher here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want an adult who's had a background check, a car, and has good reviews, like on Urban Sitter, it's $20/hr for one kid, $22-$24 for two kids.

But as my kids are getting older, I believe I will try to get one of the neighborhood high school girls to do it for $15.

Why do you care about the car? As long as the teen has their own ride to and from your house, how they get their is none of your business.

If the couple is going to be out late at night (past 10 pm or so) no parent of a teen babysitter is going to want to go out to pick their teen up. They'd make them refuse the job.
So either the employer couple needs to provide a ride home for the teen, or choose a sitter that has their own car.

I picked up my babysitting DC literally dozens of times at 10pm-12am when dc was 14-15. It was a non-issue.

Most parents are not like you.