South Dakota's a Pretty Good Place for Working Moms

It probably goes without saying that being a working mom, even in the best of times isn't exactly a breeze. So right now, any working mom who is currently working from home is dealing with more stress than ever.

Recent statistics indicate, that the unemployment rate for women, during our COVID-19 crisis, is rising faster than for men. Experts are diligently trying to suss out why.

Is it because more women work in the layoff-affected businesses, or simply because even in 2020 women still only earn, per hour, 85% of what their male colleagues do? Whatever the reason, the pressure on working moms is particularly acute in our current climate.

As with anything else, however, there are places where conditions are better for working mothers than others. WalletHub is out with its 2020 Best & Worst States for Working Moms study and it is as informative as it is revealing.

They divided the study into three major categories: Child Care, Professional Opportunities, and Work-Life Balance. Within those categories, they investigated daycare and school system quality, childcare costs, gender pay gaps, women's median salaries, female unemployment, the number of families living in poverty, parental leave policies, and much more.

They culled this information from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, among others.

When all of the information was collated and distilled down, South Dakota ended up in 12th place, which wasn't too awful. In fact, in the Professional Opportunities category, our fair state ranked second.

Here then are WalletHub's Top 12 Best States for Working Moms: