Misty Heggeness

Adding unpaid housework to GDP lowers 55 years of US growth by 0.2 points a year

The GAO values unpaid household work at up to $6 trillion a year, a fifth of GDP. The BEA series that counts it grew 6.1% a year from 1965 through 2020, against 6.3% for headline GDP, and that gap compounds to about 11%.