With more than 70 percent of mothers with young children working today, the personal finance website Wallethub has released its report on 2018's Best and Worst States for Working Moms.

Analyst Jill Gonzalez says there are 15 key metrics across three categories: child care, professional opportunities and work/life balance were used to come up with their list. Those metrics include things like gender pay gap, daycare quality and cost.

New Jersey is the 8th best state for working moms. We shine in a few areas. The state has great child care. The only catch is that you get what you pay for here, says Gonzalez. Child care costs are very expensive in New Jersey but the quality is top notch. She says there may be some states where you're spending 20 percent of your take-home pay on child care for bad quality, but that's not the case in the Garden State.

There's also a lot of pediatricians per capita in New Jersey, good access to health care and highly ranked school districts, she adds.

The other area where New Jersey does well is work/life balance.

"New Jersey tends to have a pretty solid parental-leave policy score. The average length of a woman's work is right around where it is nationally and the same with commute time," says Gonzalez.

But improvements can still be made. The gender-pay gap is pretty high in New Jersey, ranking 30th, which is along the likes of New York and Connecticut.

Vermont is the best state for working moms followed by Minnesota and Massachusetts. Alabama is the worst state for working moms followed by Louisiana and Idaho.

 

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