Minnesota Remains A Great State For Working Moms

Minnesota remains a great state for working moms.

Women make up half of the United States' workforce, and 74% of moms with children are employed. Despite that, working mothers still face several challenges throughout the country.

CHALLENGES FOR WORKING MOMS 

One of the challenges is the wage gap. While it has closed a bit over the last couple of decades, women still make only 82% of what men make per hour, and less than 10% of CEOs of S&P 500 companies are women.

WalletHub set out to discover which states are the best at supporting working moms, with Minnesota posting a pretty good top-ten finish

“The U.S. still has a lot of work to do when it comes to improving conditions for working moms, given the wage gap and the lack of representation women have in certain leadership positions. However, some states are significantly better than others," said WalletHub's Chip Lupo. "The best states for working moms provide equitable pay for women and a strong potential for career advancement, along with robust parental leave policies and high-quality child care, health care, and schools.”

BEST STATES FOR WORKING MOMS 

WalletHub used the categories of Child Care (quality, costs, school system, etc); Professional Opportunities (gender pay gap, ratio of female/male executives, medial women's salary, etc) and Work-Life Balance (parental leave, average length of work week, etc) to determine the best states for working moms.

Using those factors, Minnesota ranked as the seventh-best state for working moms.  Minnesota ranked 7th in the Child Care category, 4th in Professional Opportunities and 16th in Work-Life Balance.

The seventh-place ranking was buoyed by a seventh-place finish in day care quality, eighth-place finish in median women's salary and seventh-place finish in percentage of single moms in poverty.

Connecticut finished as the best overall state for working moms, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Vermont. The bottom five consisted of Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, Mississippi and Nevada.