They earn $33 per hour, plus perks for tasks you do for free every day.

How much are you prepared to pay a babysitter per hour? $5, $10, $30? After asking around, especially in Australia, there doesn’t appear to be a standard or accepted rate or if there is, no one can quite agree on what it should be.

According to this recent article in the New York Post however, it would appear that in parts of the US, the babysitters themselves have the upper hand and are setting the rates, some as high as $33 per hour PLUS perks.

Donna Ladd, style editor of a magazine, was toiling away in the Hearst tower when she received a text from her son’s babysitter — with the young lady’s $40 sushi order.

Ladd, as usual, called in and purchased her $20-per-hour sitter’s takeout because, as she put it, “I felt huge pressure because I wasn’t paying her as high as she wanted.”

As it turns out, all the sushi in the world wasn’t going to be enough to make this particular babysitter stick around and she later defected to another family who not only paid her desired rate of $25 per hour, but also threw in car access.

Many parents aren’t impress but really, is this such a high price to pay to someone who has the responsibility of looking after your most precious possession? And really, $25 per hour for these services, in the most expensive city in the world, really doesn’t sound all that outrageous to me.

The article went on to say:

“New York City sitters are the most expensive in the country, according to a new UrbanSitter study. And they’re only getting pricier. Since last year, the average hourly rate for one city child has jumped from $13.50 to $15.34. Compare that to $11 per hour in Chicago or $10.84 in Denver. The sad thing is this: $15.34 sounds like an absolute bargain to most New York parents, who have been quoted as high as $30 per hour by sitters barely out of high school.”

In Australia, these amounts don’t really appear to be too dissimilar. We are talking about casual babysitters here, not nannies. Nannies (or Mannies) are paid on a different basis and have different expectations and job requirements so the two really cannot be compared. But as for paying a person, qualified or not, on a casual basis to mind your child while you are out, it appears the average in Australia being paid, is around $15 per hour.

In the US however, it’s becoming big business, with elite services starting to pop up due to the demand:

There’s even a whole slew of high-end caregiver agencies catering to the rich — or desperate. NYC-based art-centric Sitters Studio charges up to $30 per hour, plus a $20 booking fee, for a minimum of four hours; Hamptons Babysitters, whose prices run as high as $33 per hour during a holiday weekend, tacks on a $25 booking fee and enforces a three-hour minimum. “Baby-sitting has now become a racket,” says Stephanie, an Upper East Side mother of two who asked that her last name not be used.

Asking to be paid for a service is a racket? Some women, like Stephanie, believes they are being taken for a ride due to their perceived wealth.But apparently the elite of NYC aren’t only troubled by the amount that they are having to shell out, this article would suggest that they are also questioning what exactly their hard earned cash is buying them.

Full time teacher, 28-year-old Jessica Horowitz, also earns up to $40 per hour to mind children, often even when the parents are home.

“Sometimes I feel guilty almost,” says Horowitz, who lives on the Upper East Side and works full-time as a teacher. “Say I get there at 7 and the kids go to sleep at 7:30, they’re paying me to watch TV and talk on the phone . . . I’m being paid essentially to just sit,” she says.

I think, if you want a night out, you’ll pay someone to look after your kids, even it that means you pay more than you feel is fair. Just like if you want to go see a concert, you’ll pay the price, even if is blatantly overpriced. Because it’s a luxury and as such, maybe you just have to suck it up.

Personally, I myself have paid anywhere from $10 to $20 per hour to various babysitters over the years. They have usually been teachers from my children’s daycare centre or younger work associates looking for some extra cash and occasionally even the local teenage neighbour.

However, on one glorious day not so long ago we realised that we had our very own babysitter living here and the sweet, sweet understanding hit that we could pay our teenager daughter $5 per hour to babysit and everyone would win. She earns money and we have a reliable, in house babysitter.

Finally, being a younger parent is starting to have its rewards!

Have you paid ridiculous rates to babysitters so you can go out and did you ever feel like you were being taken advantage of? How much should we be paying a babysitter per hour here in Australia?