To discover a really experienced child minder charges half what my Bulgarian cleaner does....

[nigelslaterfan]

I mean £8 an hour for the latter, 25 years old.
£4 for the former who I understand has nursery qualifications as well.

It just seems surprising. I guess the CM can have a bunch of kids at once but still, seems wrong somehow!

Yes of course, madusa.

But given the op´s example, look aftr two children for one hour or clean for one hour to earn the same.

Where´s the correlation?

You´d think that looking after one child for an hour would be equal to cleaning for two hours.

i sympathise with your point op

however many people who use cm's don't earn 8 quid an hour themselves

if you have two or more children it becomes even more prohibitive

i've had to wait until dd1 went to school to have dd2 because i can't afford two preschool childcare bills

i think cm's do a wonderful thing but i'm also glad they don't charge so much

dd1's cm only does wraparound school hours care, she works 4 hours a day termtime only and earns £18/hr, not bad imo but i do understand she is self employed and has built her business up over years etc

A CM might have 3 kids at £4 an hour each, but she isn't making £12 an hour! Her "profit" is still likely to be around minimum wage.

But many CM's charge a dayrate based on a fixed number of hours mine charges £50 for a full day and £25 for half day. And she has four children of varying ages - she also gets paid whilst DS is at nursery.

Personally I'd rather look afetr 4 children of varying ages for £200 a day than do 10 hours of cleaning a day for £80. (Though actually am very glad I don;t have to do either!)

If my CM was more expensive I would send DS to a day nursery at about £60 per day so their fees are also cpaped by what the market can bear.

I pay £200 a week for full time childcare or £135 for 3 days. That is by far my biggest expense & keeps me poor. My child minder is totally brilliant and at the moment she only has 1 child in her care. So she gets less than £50 per day for a 10 hour (+ preparation & paperwork) day. She is very experienced and well qualified. Of course she deserves to be paid much much more but I certainly couldn't afford her services if she was.

A cleaner is a luxury most people can't afford, a child minder for many people is not. That is the difference, as shit as it might be, and that is the reason a cleaner can charge more.

I think it's normal to want to pay as little as possible for everything. And for suppliers to charge as much as they can. Hence the market.

Yes, well, up to a point.
I mean you can probably buy a car for £100 but it might be a heap of junk and kill you!

Yes, but you wouldn't pay £50000 for the same heap of junk. All cars are far from being the same.

I mean that buying a new Aston Martin or 12 year old Ford Fiesta is not the same transaction, just because they're both 'cars'

How can you be unreasonable to discover this?

oh I meant, AIBU to find the discrepancy a surprise.
Clearly many people are not surprised.

Also factor in expenses with running a cleaning business and don't un derestimate the expenses involved in a CM business.

don't think most people could afford CM's at £8 an hour...at that price I'd be paying my CM £160 a day when I go back to work after xmas....as it is we'll be paying £70 a day and am not even too sure how we're going to manage that

Apples and oranges.

What about people who offer other services like "life coaches" or hypnotists or alternative therapists or even children's party entertainers! You might end up paying one of them £50+ per hour for their services once a week/month/year. If you offer a service at a price enough people are wiling to pay them voila, you have yourself a business.

A childminder or cleaner who charged the same per hour as a commercial solicitor would find clients very few and far between, while the solicitor couldn't afford to even cover their costs at the same rate as the others charge.

I can justify spending £10 an hour a couple of times a week for a cleaner. I couldn't afford to go to work and pay my childminder £20 an hour (2 dc) so the CM would be out of a job.

This is not surprising.

If I were a cm I'd take on more than one child a day and make a lot more than £4 an hour.

There is no comparison really. A cleaner drives in her car to my home, stays for an hour and in that time works solidly for me for the whole hour. £8. She then drives off to another house, making the travelling time at least half as much again as the hour she is here.

A childminder may look after 3 or 4 children at once, meaning that the £4 per hour is increased to £12/£16. She has the ability to work in her own home, and the children will usually be dropped off there by the parent, so charging from the moment they arrive.

I do not mean to devalue what the childminder does, but the earning capacity is not the £4 per hour you are quoting.

Cleaning is 'unpleasant' work, so presumably you are also paying a premium to persuade someone to do a task that you don't want to do.

A nanny who works exclusively for one client would be paid more per hour to take account of the exclusivity?

Another factor is that anyone who works in short shifts like an hour gets paid more than someone doing a long shift. Lollipop ladies, breakfast club supervisors, all of these jobs pay more per hour than one with a 9-5 daily pattern, presumably to make up for the inconvenience of the journey to and from work just for an hour or so.

I'm a part-time childminder.
I have a cleaning lady.
I pay our cleaning lady twice as much as I get per hour for childminding (I only mind one child; have my own kids too).
I think this is fair: cleaning is doing someone else's dirty work for them, minding is usually a lovely job.
Hate cleaning.
Like taking care of kids.

Part of the reason I childmind is so I can afford - and justify - having a cleaning lady.

I just discovered today I can hire a new graduate with a 2:1 in graphic design for minimum wage as she cannot get a job.

There is wage deflation happening everywhere.

Yes, it is a fact which is not lost on me. Btwj have you counted the number of "Why is childcare so expensive???" threads on here?

By the way £8/hour is just about minimum wage if the employee pays their own NI.

Presumably a CM gets paid £4/hour by each parent who has a child with her so she is probably getting £12/hour if she has 3 children.

I wouldn't worry as a CM I am earning decent wages. £15 an hour between 9-3 and upto £35 an hour before and after school.

I don't know any CM's that would actually work for £4 PH.

imnotaceleb - how much of that £15ph is actually your wages though?