Her Next Chapters

96. Your Unpaid Labor Deserves Recognition and Rest This Labor Day

• Christina Kohl

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Labor Day celebrates all forms of work, including the unpaid labor that maintains households and communities. The unpaid work we do builds valuable skills that can translate to professional opportunities when positioned correctly on resumes.

• Unpaid labor has significant economic value, with stay-at-home moms providing work worth $184,000 annually according to Salary.com
• Women shoulder more hours of caregiving and housework weekly, regardless of employment status
• Include unpaid accomplishments on your resume when they demonstrate relevant skills for target jobs
• Personal example: coordinating complex medical care across 16 surgeries developed skills valuable for employer benefits and insurance positions
• Focus on quantifiable achievements rather than routine household tasks when translating unpaid work to resume content
• Take Labor Day as an opportunity to genuinely rest from both paid and unpaid labor

Grab my free resume template to learn how to include unpaid work in your resume, or book a personal resume review where we'll go through your resume line by line. 







Christina Kohl:

Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started.

Christina Kohl:

Hi, friends, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters. This episode is just a few days before Labor Day weekend, and so I wanted to kind of touch on Labor Day weekend, the holiday coming up, and of course, Labor labor Day celebrates the work that year-round we do round, and I did a little bit of research on it because I wanted to,. I was just curious, like how long has it been around? And it became a federal holiday way back in 1894. So many states had already observed it and if you remember from your high school history days, maybe even middle school, all of the labor unrest and unions. So it kind of started with that and then it became a federal law in 1894. So over 130 years ago. And it still matters today.

Christina Kohl:

And I know most of us, myself included, think of Labor Day as, it's a day off and it's barbecues, three-day weekend, all of that. But it's more than that, it's a built-in reminder to rest, and this is true whether you are currently working, you're in a job search, you do a lot of unpaid labor in the home or in your community, so it's true for all of those situations. It's really a day to take off and rest. And so if you, maybe you're not going out of town for the weekend or have big parties, but try to get all of your work done and by work I mean the laundry, the cleaning, the meal prep, the grocery shopping, all of that If you can get those done over the weekend Saturday, Sunday, if that's your normal and keep Monday open for something fun and energizing and truly restful, whatever that is for you. So that's my encouragement to you and that you'll be able to come back stronger on Tuesday for the short week. Right, and it's also kind of nice for those of us with kids who are like start, whether they're starting in college or you know, whatever school that they're starting back. Most people, most kids, are back in school. So it's kind of nice to have a short week after you know, getting ramped back up and just kind of have a little bit of a breather. But that's for us too.

Christina Kohl:

And one thing I want to call out is that unpaid labor is real labor. So, even again, whether you're working or not, the things that you are doing to maintain your household and keep families and communities running strong, that's valuable work and it's labor that you also deserve a rest from taking a break. And just to drive home this point that unpaid labor is real labor, Salary. com's 2021 estimate for stay-at-home moms, their role if it was outsourced, it would be $184,000 a year. That is the value of the work that a stay-at-home mom provides to a household. So keep that in mind when you're doing all this unpaid labor. A nd international agencies estimate that unpaid care work is roughly 9% of global GDP, gross domestic product, right? and in some countries the value can exceed 40%. So unpaid work, unpaid labor is important, and US data shows that women still shoulder more hours of caregiving and housework each week, and this is whether you are working outside of the home or not, so that the work is real and it builds skills.

Christina Kohl:

But not every home task belongs on a resume, so, of course, I can't help myself, I'm going to be talking about resumes, and whether it's unpaid labor or your professional work where you're getting paid, you want to make sure that everything that goes on your resume is relevant to the job that you want to get, and this includes your unpaid work. You'll hear me say this if you've been following me for any length of time that unpaid experience is experience, and so one thing you want to do is just in reading the job posting. If you found a job that you're interested in applying for, you want to ask does an unpaid accomplishment show the same skills, scope or outcomes that they need for this job? And if the answer is yes, it belongs on the resume, whether you were paid for it because it was part of your job, if it was unpaid because it was just part of your life things that you did, or if it was a volunteer position. If it's relevant to the job that you're going for then it belongs on your resume or it could be even included in your interview story, your cover letter, et cetera. So there's more to it than that and I'm going to give you an example.

Christina Kohl:

So for me, during the time that I was a full-time caregiver, full-time stay-at-home mom, it feels weird to say that, but a stay-at-home mom I navigated complex medical care for one of my family members. So if my target roles included things like patient access coordinator, care coordinator, claims associate working for an insurance company or, in my case, my return to work position included employer benefits, and so this was appropriate to include on my resume; I included my cover letter and I certainly talked about it in interviews. And, to give you some backdrop, my son was born with a cleft lip and palate and that required multiple surgeries across his childhood, so not just one and done type of thing. He had 16 surgeries. He was three months old with his first surgery and 19 with his last surgery. So across that whole time he had all these surgeries and I was working with multiple doctors, different disciplines and having to navigate insurance through all of that and, of course, the patient care, the patient advocacy, all of those things, and it's not something if I'm going for, say, because my background is human resources. So if I'm going for a job that's more employee relations or training and development, I'm not necessarily going to talk about this part of my personal life, about navigating all this complex medical care, but if I'm going for a job that's related to employee benefits, then, yeah, I am going to include it.

Christina Kohl:

And so here's an example of how this would look on a resume. I'm just going to read from my notes: Coordinated complex medical care for a family member across 16 surgeries, scheduling multi-specialty appointments, maintaining records and ensuring continuity of care. And then another bullet could be, especially if I was going to be working with the insurance industry in any way, or, like I said, employer benefit plans. Okay, here's the bullet: Managed insurance authorizations and led successful appeals by tracking policies, documenting medical necessity and securing approval that reduced out-of-pocket expenses by more than $60,000. Okay, so resume-worthy are because they're relevant. But, again, if I'm going for a job that's like training and development, they don't care that I managed all of this with the insurance companies.

Christina Kohl:

So, anyway, I just wanted to give you an example of what that looks like and that that was unpaid labor that I did. I left the workforce when he was two and I went back when he was almost 16. And so some of those I did while I was working and some of that stuff I managed while I was home, but it's all relevant to a type of role that I was applying for, so that's why it would be there and it was unpaid labor, labor of love, navigating all of that. And I just want to give you some other examples that maybe you can see yourself in as we're looking at these, some unpaid examples of things that are relevant to your next career. So, for example, if you want to go into, say, operations or being a project coordinator, here's an example of something that would support that: Led a five-parent fundraising committee with timelines, vendor bids and communications to raise $18,000 and increase participation 22% year over year. And then here's an example if you were going for a type of role that was like managing people or managing an office, so : Organized volunteer schedules for a community pantry and trained 25 new volunteers, cutting onboarding time in half and improving shift coverage reliability. And then, finally, another example, maybe you're going into communications or marketing: Wrote and published a monthly school newsletter to 1,200 subscribers and improved open rates from 28% to 43% in one semester.

Christina Kohl:

Okay, so these are just some examples. So be thinking of what you do that is, unpaid labor that would be relevant to a job that you want to get next. And then things, just as a side note, things not to include because I see this a lot of times, particularly on resumes of someone who's been out of the workforce for a while, routine tasks that most working parents also handle, like standard carpool logistics or everyday household chores or meal planning, budgeting, things like that. That's adulting. We all do that and, quite honestly, it can be off-putting to see something like that on a resume and it's confusing, right, because you're told quantify things, put down your accomplishments. If you want help navigating how to talk about your unpaid labor, all those relevant life experiences that would make you a great employee, a great hire.

Christina Kohl:

I offer resume reviews. So if you haven't already, first off, grab my free resume template, because it talks about how to include unpaid work in your resume and how to highlight that and how to include it on your resume in your experience section. And then also I offer a personal resume review where we get on a call together and we go through your resume line by line by line. It's recorded so you can take it and re-listen to it at your own pace and really kind of get into your specifics. That is one of the services that I offer my clients. So if that's something of interest to you, check the show notes for both of those, the resume template as well as the resume review.

Christina Kohl:

And just to remember, Labor Day honors work and workers, and I encourage you, and it's a reminder for me too, to honor the work that we do that nobody else sees, and take the rest that you need to keep going, right?

Christina Kohl:

Just like they always say on the airplanes, put your oxygen mask on first before you help someone else. Use Labor Day as that opportunity to rest and take care of yourself so that you can keep serving the others that are in your life that rely on you, whether it's an employer or your family, your household. And if you're job searching, oh my goodness, just take Monday off. No one's going to be missing your applications on a Monday that their office is closed, right? So take the day off, do something energizing and make it a treat. You've earned it All, right? Well, that's it for this week's episode. Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend and I will talk to you next time.

Christina Kohl:

Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own and your next chapters are ready to begin.