Gross domestic product counts what is bought and sold. Someone paid to cook a meal shows up in it. The same meal cooked at home does not. That is not an oversight; it is the definition. GAO has now measured the size of what the definition leaves out.
The number
GAO estimated that the national market value of unpaid household work was at least $5.6 to 6.0 trillion in 2024 (which was equivalent to at least 19.2 to 20.2 percent of 2024 GDP).
Split into its two halves:
| Estimated value, 2024 | Share of 2024 GDP | |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic tasks | $4.3–4.4 trillion | 14.7–15.1% |
| Caregiving (adults, and children as a primary activity) | $1.1–1.4 trillion | 3.9–4.9% |
And a floor, not a midpoint, because of what is left out:
These estimated values do not include secondary child care, which is keeping an eye on children while engaged in other activities. Including secondary child care increases the estimated values of caregiving and of all unpaid household work.
Anyone who has worked at a kitchen table while a four-year-old plays nearby knows which category that is, and it is not in the $5.6 trillion.
The time
In a typical day, most individuals (87.3 percent) spent at least some time on household work — an average of about 3.72 hours, according to GAO's analysis of 2021–2024 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data.
Nearly four hours a day, done by almost nine people in ten. GAO's own summary prices that at "around $70 per day."
Who does it
GAO reports overrepresentation carefully — as a gap between two percentages, not as a characterization:
For example, women made up about 53.9 percent of those engaged in this work, but 51.2 percent of the U.S. population.
And it separates the kinds of care, which is where the picture stops being uniform:
Also, women and married individuals spent more time on child care than men and unmarried individuals. However, women and men who cared for adults spent similar amounts of time doing so, as did married and unmarried individuals.
Child care splits by sex and marital status. Adult care — a parent, a spouse, a sibling — does not, in this data. That is a finding worth keeping separate from the more familiar one.
Why GAO says it matters
Not as a moral argument. As a measurement one:
Studies show that supplementing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with the value of unpaid household work can provide a better understanding of the U.S. economy than GDP alone. For example, the decline in economic output during the COVID-19 recession was smaller when this value was included.
That example is the whole case in one line. When paid work stopped, unpaid work did not — so a measure that counts only the first records a deeper collapse than the country actually experienced.
GAO also names the practical consequence, quoting the economists it interviewed: "valuing unpaid work can help inform policies that affect caregivers, such as policies intended to improve caregivers' financial security in retirement."
Retirement systems are built on recorded earnings. Someone who spent years caring for a parent has years of work that no earnings record contains.
Why it is not in GDP
GAO gives the reason without editorializing: unpaid household work "is not included in GDP because it takes place outside of formal market transactions and requires additional resources to calculate."
Both halves of that are true, and only one of them is a principle. The second is a budget.