A new AARP estimate: family caregivers provided $1 trillion of unpaid care in 2024

On March 26, 2026, AARP’s Public Policy Institute released the latest update to its Valuing the Invaluable series.[1] The number on the cover is the kind of figure that’s worth pausing on if you’re doing this work yourself: $1.01 trillion.

What the report found

Drawing on Caregiving in the US 2025 data and a new methodology that better reflects the full intensity and range of caregiving tasks, the AARP team estimates that in 2024:[1]

• 59 million family caregivers helped an adult family member, neighbor, or friend with daily activities during the year
• About 37 million of them (63%) provided care every month
• They provided a total of 49.5 billion hours of care
• At an average value of $20.41 per hour, that adds up to $1.01 trillion in economic value
• That figure exceeded the total amount of federal, state, and local Medicaid spending in 2024, which was $932 billion

Why this matters

Most people who are caregiving don’t think about their work in dollar terms. They’re showing up because someone they love needs them, and the cost shows up in private ways: lost income, lost sleep, lost time with the rest of their life. But the aggregate number matters, because it tells the truth about who is actually paying for long-term care in this country.

The biggest payer of long-term care in America isn’t Medicaid. It isn’t private insurance. It’s family caregivers, mostly unpaid, mostly invisible.

If you’re one of those 59 million, this report is a useful piece of context to keep in mind the next time you wonder whether what you’re doing counts as “real” work. By the most standard measure economists use, it adds up to more than the entire Medicaid program.

The full report and a state-level breakdown are available at aarp.org.