Sorry, Mom. You take a pay cut this year

The time spent on "mom job functions" by a stay-at-home mom would equate to an annual salary of $116,805 in the job world, a drop of about $21,000 from last year's calculation of $138,094, said Salary.com Inc.

This is the eighth year that a survey on mothers' pay issues has been conducted by Salary.com, a Waltham company that provides on-demand compensation and talent-management solutions that help businesses and individuals manage pay and performance.

The firm used a different methodology to conduct the survey this year, and that's a reason why perhaps stay-at-home moms took a pay cut.

This year, Salary.com said it "adjusted the mom salary benchmark based on a key factor that affects pay - company size - and provided a more complete view using total cash compensation for the mom job."

Previously, the survey was based on the national median base salary for all company sizes, the company said.

"Smaller organizations typically pay less," Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com, said in a statement. "By using data for companies with fewer than 25 employees - offset slightly by the addition of annual bonuses - we saw a net decrease in U.S. mom's pay of nearly $21K from 2007. We believe this is a valuable way to help educate the average person about the factors affecting compensation and how employers determine pay."

Salary.com calculated the monetary value of the time an American working mom spends on motherhood jobs at $68,405, down from $85,938 in 2007.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)