New research* reveals California as the best state for working families in the United States as of August 2022. With so many having experienced hybrid or remote working through the COVID-19 pandemic, many working parents and carers might now be considering how they can secure a better work-life balance in the long term. Those looking to prioritize family time could be looking at uprooting as different regions and states offer vastly different experiences for working families.

In the context of The Great Resignation, many might also be looking at changing jobs or even careers entirely. For these folks likewise, a change of scenery could be a key part of designing the next phase of their career and life. And of course, those with young children or those looking to start a family will certainly be examining their options for where to put down roots.

has undertaken original research to determine how the different states across the US rank for working families. The data is mapped across four key categories: children, work, society, and home life. The data points include factors like high school graduation numbers, average commute, state legislation, and the costs of a family day out.

California and New York rank first and second respectively by a fair margin, but some of the other states making up the top ten might be surprising to some. A state’s practicality and affordability for working families is a key marker of its social, political, and economic landscape.

Commenting on these findings, President of Americas for Frank Recruitment Group, Rowan O’Grady said, “The top ranking states look much as we might expect based on California and New York being particularly well-known as centers for both affluent industries and cutting-edge culture. But it’s good to see that those states are also good locations for families in terms of both access and perhaps more surprisingly, affordability. Hawaii making the top ten is also really wonderful to see, as the non-mainland states are rarely given much prominence in these kinds of discussions.”

Methodology
Data was collected for all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 19 different data points across four categories: children, work, society, and home life. Where applicable, a family of four has been factored in any calculations.

“Children” is comprised of three data points: the number of high school graduations, the average cost of childcare, and the number of adoption agencies in each state. The data on high school graduations was collected from the National Centre for Education Statistics and based on the most recent academic year for which there was complete data, 2018-2019. Projected data for 2021-2022 was available, but preference was given to proven rather than speculative data here. The average monthly cost of childcare was collected from the Economic Policy Institute. The most recent data set available was dated October 2020. The data on adoption facilities was drawn from the federal government’s Child Welfare Gateway using the National Foster Care & Adoption Directory.

“Work” takes account of six key data points: the number of public transport options, the cost of purchasing a car, the cost of gas, the average commute time, the average number of hours worked, and the number of jobs offering parental leave. Data on public transport was collected from the American Public Transport Association. This included buses, heavy and light rail, as well as community public transport services. Interstate services such as Greyhound buses were included for each state they serve. Information on the cost of buying a car was collected from the 2022 iSeeCars study on the average price of a used car in each state. The price of gas per gallon was taken from AAA Gas Prices on August 15^th, 2022. Data for both the average length of commute and average number of hours spent working was drawn from the United States Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and Mean Usual Hours Worked tabling. The number of jobs that offering parental leave packages was collected from Indeed.

“Society” comprises five data points: LGBTQ+ inclusivity, disability inclusivity, cost of family healthcare, the number of community clinics, and crime in the state. Data for LGBTQ+ inclusivity was collected using the Movement Advancement Project table of non-discrimination laws in each US state. Each state was awarded a point if it had protections in place around sexual orientation in five key areas: employment, housing, public accommodations, credit, and eligibility for state employment. If a state also had protections for gender identity and expression in any of these categories, it was also awarded a point. Although a scoring system for inclusion is not ideal, it was important to reflect the different experiences people may have of different states in some way in this data-driven context.

Disability inclusivity considers state legislation design to protect the rights of disabled people. Alongside the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a federal law. As such, states can create specific legislation to strengthen ADA provisions within their state. Each state with additional legislation to complement and better implement the ADA was awarded a point per supporting law. Where a state had no additional laws to support the ADA, no points were awarded. Data for this was originally drawn from BLR. Their links have since become 404 pages, but the same data is also reproduced on Bloomberg, excepting Nevada and Mississippi which are linked here via the Wayback Machine.

The average cost of a family healthcare plan was collected from the KFF’s most recent marketplace benchmark for family healthcare premiums. The data was collected from this year (2022). Community clinic data was collected from the National Association of Community Health Centres. Finally, data for the crime data point comes from the FBI’s most recent report (2019) and from this report.

“Home Life” takes in four data points: average household income, average cost of a family day out, average cost of purchasing a home, and the average rent for a family home. Data on household income came from the Justice Department and is accurate to March 2021. The cost of a family day out includes the cost of dining at McDonald’s (or an equivalent fast food outlet), the cost of tennis court rental, the cost of movie tickets. Data here was drawn from Numbeo and represents each state’s capital city as Numbeo doesn’t collect state-wide data. Data on house prices came from Zillow. Data on the average rent for a family home came from World Population Review for the 50 states and from Zillow for Washington, D.C..

With all the data points together, a scoring system was devised to determine the best state for working families. In each of the 19 categories, the highest value was divided by 100 to create the N score for the category. The data was then divided by the N score of the category to work out the Family Friendly score in the category. Once the states had been scored for all 19 categories, an average was taken to establish the overall Family friendly score of each US State. The states were then ranked according to their Family Friendly score with the highest score meaning the better the state is to raise a family.

*Frank Recruitment Group