More and more often women are being literally forced to stay at home because of the high cost of childcare in the UK. Unfortunately, this is placing a huge financial burden on families that rely on the income of both parents to make ends meet.
According to the latest figures, there are at least 32,000 women opting to stay at home to look after their children since the cost of childcare would actually have women paying out of pocket to go to work. The cost of childcare added to the rising costs of transportation put a good number of women in the negative wage bracket.
In a recent article in the Guardian, it was reported that the average cost of childcare in a full-time placement in the UK is approximately £385 a month but if the child is under the age of two, that cost can increase to double that amount at £729. These figures are the result of analysis provided by the latest survey of the ONS Labour Force.
In the example cited in the Guardian, the average person spends approximately £90 (part time employment) in work related costs per month including such things as travel, clothing and meals. Another £147 is spent on education related expenses. If a woman works just part time with an annual salary of £8,557 then she would end up spending, out of pocket, £98 a month to go to work after having paid national insurance, taxes and childcare if she had two children ages 7 and 1.
If compared to the salary of a woman with no children, after work related costs she would realize £407 monthly. These figures were tallied by the Family Finances Report issued by Aviva. As these figures were based on part-time workers, they also did an analysis of full time workers and they only fared slightly better. Women with children would end up with £120 a month whilst women with only if she doesn’t have children. The end result is, for women with children, it just doesn’t pay to go to work if she is only making average wages.
