Home care
What Home Care Costs, State by State
SaveHome care rates look similar across the country until you multiply them out by the hours actually needed. This guide gathers what each state page publishes — an hourly rate where a survey reports one — and shows where the cliff between hourly help and round-the-clock coverage sits.
Last updated: August 2026History
What the hourly rate multiplies into
Agency rates cover the aide's wage, payroll taxes, supervision, insurance, and backfill when the regular aide is sick — which is why an agency rate is meaningfully higher than hiring privately, and why it usually comes with a substitute when you need one.
Most families start at a handful of hours and climb. The useful number is not the hourly rate but the monthly total at the level of help actually needed: morning-and-evening help, a full day, or overnight. Around the clock is where cost typically exceeds a residential setting, and it is the point at which most families reconsider the plan.
What home care costs by state
Each row is that state's own published summary. Rates are agency rates for personal-care aides unless the row says otherwise.
| State | What the state's own guide reported |
|---|---|
| Alabama | Home care in Alabama is among the least expensive in the country, and the reason is uncomfortable: Alabama aides are paid less than aides almost anywhere else. Expect roughly $26 to $28 an hour from an agency — near $4,500 to $4,900 a month for forty hours a week, against a national median closer to $5,900. |
| Alaska | Home care in Alaska costs more than almost anywhere: roughly $36 to $39 an hour, or about $6,200 to $6,800 a month for forty hours a week. Alaska also inverts the usual pattern — aides in its nonmetropolitan areas out-earn Anchorage aides, because eighty percent of the state has no road to drive in on, and a caregiver who must fly to a shift is priced accordingly. |
| Arizona | Home care in Arizona runs roughly $33 to $36 an hour — about $5,700 to $6,200 a month for forty hours a week — which puts the state almost exactly at the national median. |
| Arkansas | Home care in Arkansas is priced by the hour, and that hour is built almost entirely out of wages. Arkansas sets its own minimum wage at $11.00, above the federal floor, and that figure sits underneath every quote an agency gives. Nationally the median homemaker rate works out to $33 an hour. |
| California | California prices home care by the hour, and then California law reprices the hour. A personal attendant earns overtime after nine hours in a day or forty-five in a week, not the forty that governs most of the country. |
| Colorado | Colorado is one of the few states that wrote a wage floor directly into its Medicaid rules. Providers of home and community-based services must pay direct care workers a base wage of $17.00 an hour, and more where a city sets a higher minimum, which in Denver means $19.29. |
| Connecticut | Connecticut is unusual twice over. Its minimum wage moves automatically each January, reaching $16.94 in 2026, so the labor cost under every quote rises without a vote. And it runs a state-funded home care program for people whose assets sit far above the Medicaid line, up to $48,798 for one person, against Medicaid's $1,600. |
| Delaware | Home care in Delaware is billed by the hour, and the honest starting number is the national one: about $33 an hour for homemaker help and about $34 for hands-on personal care. Twenty hours a week is roughly $2,950 a month. |
| Florida | Florida home care is billed hourly, and the dependable anchor is the 2024 national median: about $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for hands-on personal care. Twenty hours a week comes to roughly $2,860 a month; round-the-clock care runs past $24,000. |
| Georgia | Georgia home care is billed by the hour, and the anchor worth trusting is the 2024 national median: about $34 an hour for hands-on personal care, $33 for homemaker help. Forty hours a week comes to roughly $5,900 a month. |
| Hawaii | Hawaii does not publish a price for home care. What it publishes is a wage: the state's home health and personal care aides earn a median of $18.32 an hour. |
| Idaho | Idaho is one of the few states that does not license non-medical home care agencies, and since July 2025 it no longer licenses Medicare-certified home health agencies either. So the state's stamp is not the thing to check here. What Idaho does publish is a wage: its aides earn a median of $16.72 an hour. |
| Illinois | Illinois aides earn a median of $18.30 an hour, and the state has about 134,100 of them, one of the largest home care workforces in the country. What an agency bills is roughly double the wage. The bigger Illinois variable is where you are standing: the state minimum is $15.00, Chicago's is $17.05, and every domestic worker in Chicago is owed the city rate no matter how small their employer. |
| Indiana | Indiana aides earn a median of $16.86 an hour, and an agency bills roughly double that. The Indiana-specific part is structural: the state licenses non-medical help and skilled home health as two separate things, so a parent who needs both a hand with bathing and a wound dressed is often dealing with two organisations, two schedules, and two bills. |
| Iowa | Home care in Iowa is billed by the hour, and almost always paid out of pocket unless Medicaid is involved. What you are quoted depends less on Iowa than on your county: a Des Moines or Iowa City agency draws from a deeper caregiver pool than a farm town two hours out, where the same hour includes a drive nobody bills you for but everybody prices in. |
| Kansas | Home care in Kansas is priced by the hour in a market the state does not regulate, so there is no Kansas rate to look up — only quotes. What you are offered turns on where you live: an agency in Wichita or Overland Park has a roster to draw from, while a frontier county in the west may have no aide within a reasonable drive at any price. |
| Kentucky | Home care in Kentucky is billed by the hour and mostly paid out of pocket, and the word covers two different products. Medicare-certified home health is skilled, physician-ordered, temporary, and — unusually — limited by state law in how many agencies may exist. |
| Louisiana | Home care in Louisiana is billed by the hour and unregulated in price, but the state's Medicaid architecture is unusual in a way that matters more than any quote. |
| Maine | Maine does something almost no other state does: it sets a wage floor under direct care work and then multiplies it. State law requires the labor share of MaineCare rates for essential support workers to equal at least 125 percent of the minimum wage. With the minimum at $15.10 in 2026, that floor is $18.88 an hour, and because Maine indexes its minimum wage to inflation, the floor climbs every January. |
| Maryland | Maryland is not one home care market. The state minimum wage is $15.00, but Montgomery, Howard and Prince George's counties each set their own higher floor, so the labor cost under an identical hour of care changes when you cross a county line. |
| Massachusetts | Massachusetts regulates the caregiver's wage but not the agency selling you the caregiver. The state sits at the bargaining table and set a personal care attendant wage of $20.00 an hour, well above its own $15.00 minimum. |
| Michigan | Michigan's home care market has two unusual features. Its minimum wage schedule was rewritten by a state Supreme Court ruling and is climbing to $15.00 by 2027. |
| Minnesota | Home care in Minnesota is sold by the hour, and no single number covers the state. The national median works out to roughly $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide, which prices a 44-hour week near $6,300 a month. |
| Mississippi | Home care in Mississippi is billed by the hour, and the hourly number is usually the easy part. The national median works out to about $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide, and Mississippi's own wage row sits below the national middle. |
| Missouri | Home care in Missouri is billed by the hour, and the statewide average is the number least likely to match your quote. The national median works out to roughly $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide, priced on a 44-hour week. |
| Montana | In Montana, the hourly rate is close to the wrong question. The national median works out to roughly $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide, but almost nobody here buys care by the hour. |
| Nebraska | Home care in Nebraska is bought by the hour. The national median works out to about $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide, which is roughly $2,900 a month for twenty hours a week and about $24,750 a month for around-the-clock coverage. |
| Nevada | Home care in Nevada is billed by the hour, off a national median of about $33 for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide — roughly $2,947 a month for twenty hours a week. Two things are unusual here. |
| New Hampshire | New Hampshire has no state minimum wage — it defaults to the federal $7.25 — and that fact tells you nothing about what home care costs here. The number that predicts a New Hampshire quote is what an aide can earn forty minutes south, in Massachusetts. Start from the national median of about $33 an hour for homemaker help and $34 for a home health aide, then read the state's own wage line. |
| New Jersey | New Jersey home care is billed by the hour, and the state adds a step most do not: hands-on personal care is done by a Certified Homemaker-Home Health Aide, credentialed by the Board of Nursing, working for a firm licensed by the Division of Consumer Affairs. Start from the national median of about $33 to $34 an hour — near $2,950 a month for twenty hours a week — and read New Jersey's own wage line from there. |
| New Mexico | Home care in New Mexico is bought by the hour, and the hour is quoted by the agency, not set by the state. Most families are pricing personal care — help with bathing, dressing, meals — rather than skilled nursing. |
| New York | More of what a New York home care hour costs is set by law here than most families expect. Two rules move a New York quote more than anything an agency chooses: the wage parity law, which puts a higher compensation floor under Medicaid-funded aides in and around New York City, and the state's live-in rule, which pays a 24-hour live-in case at roughly half a day's hours. |
| North Carolina | North Carolina is a low-wage-floor state for home care, and that is the single fact behind most of what you will be quoted. The state sets no minimum wage of its own above the federal floor, so the federal floor is the floor here. |
| North Dakota | North Dakota does something most states do not: it lets families hire an individual caregiver directly and have the state pay them. That person is called a Qualified Service Provider, they enroll with the state rather than work for an agency, and the rate is set publicly. |
| Ohio | Home care in Ohio costs roughly what it costs nationally, which is unusual and useful: agency rates for a personal-care aide land near $33 an hour, so twenty hours a week runs about $2,900 a month and forty hours about $5,700. Around-the-clock shift coverage is a different universe — roughly $24,000 a month. |
| Oklahoma | Home care in Oklahoma is priced below the national line — the $33-an-hour national agency benchmark is closer to a ceiling here than a midpoint. But the cheaper hour is not the story. |
| Oregon | Home care in Oregon costs more than the national benchmark suggests, and the gap is not small. Oregon pays home care aides near the top of the national range, and agency rates follow wages closely — so the national $33 an hour is a floor here, not a midpoint. |
| Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania's statewide home care median lands near the national figure — roughly $33 an hour through an agency — and that number describes almost no actual household. |
| Rhode Island | Rhode Island home care is billed by the hour, and no public source publishes a Rhode Island bill rate — agencies set their own. What is published: the national median for an aide works out to about $34 an hour at 44 hours a week. |
| South Carolina | Home care in South Carolina is billed by the hour by private agencies, and no state source publishes their rates. The national median works out to about $34 an hour for an aide, $33 for homemaker help. |
| South Dakota | South Dakota home care is billed by the hour, and no state source publishes the rate. Nationally the median works out to about $34 an hour for an aide. |
| Tennessee | Tennessee home care is billed by the hour, and no state agency publishes what agencies charge. The national median comes to about $34 an hour for an aide, $33 for homemaker help. |
| Texas | Texas aides are among the lowest-paid in the country, and Texas home care still costs close to the national rate: roughly $33 an hour through an agency, about $2,860 a month for twenty hours a week, and around $24,000 a month for around-the-clock shift coverage. The wage is only about half the bill. |
| Utah | Utah home care runs roughly $33 an hour through an agency, but most Utah families never buy a full schedule. They buy twelve hours a week to hold up a daughter who is already doing the rest — about $1,720 a month. |
| Vermont | Vermont home care prices above the national median: expect something north of $33 an hour, roughly $4,000 a month for four hours a day, and about $24,000 a month for round-the-clock shifts. Two things make Vermont unusual. |
| Virginia | An hour of home care in Virginia has three prices, not one. Through an agency it runs near the national median of $33 an hour. Through Virginia's consumer-directed Medicaid route, the attendant is paid directly and the agency's half of the bill largely disappears. |
| Washington | Washington prices well above the national median: expect the high thirties an hour, roughly $4,600 a month for four hours a day, and north of $27,000 a month for round-the-clock shifts. Two things are unique here. |
| West Virginia | West Virginia buys home care at the bottom of the national table. The national benchmark is about $33 an hour; the federal wage survey puts West Virginia's aide wages among the lowest anywhere, and quotes here follow them down. Four hours a day lands nearer $3,200 a month than the $4,000 the benchmark implies. |
| Wisconsin | Wisconsin home care runs at or a little above the national benchmark of about $33 an hour — roughly $4,000 a month for four hours a day, and around $24,000 a month for round-the-clock shifts. What makes Wisconsin different is not the price. |
| Wyoming | Wyoming home care lands near the national benchmark of about $33 an hour — roughly $4,000 a month for four hours a day — but the statewide average is thinner here than anywhere. This is the least densely populated state in the lower forty-eight, its minimum wage statute still reads $5.15, and what a household actually buys is not an hour of care. |
Every figure above is carried across from the state guide it came from, unchanged — the $36 in the Alaska row is Alaska's own published figure. Where a row quotes a national range or median instead of a figure of its own, that is the state page's own wording carried across with it — no state has a state-specific survey figure invented for it here. The sources behind these numbers are listed at the end of this guide 1Ref 1Genworth Financial / CareScout (2025).Genworth and CareScout Release Cost of Care Survey Results for 2024.Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 50 of them..
Why rates differ, and where the state line stops mattering
Home care rates are wage-driven, so they track a state's labor market more directly than almost any other care cost — minimum wage floors, home-care worker supply, and urban-versus-rural staffing all show up in the number. Within a state, a rural county with few aides can cost more than the metro, not less, because staffing an hour there is harder.
Medicare does not pay for this. Medicare's home health benefit covers intermittent skilled nursing and therapy for a homebound patient, not the hours of help with bathing, dressing, meals and supervision that families mean by 'home care'.
Running your own weekly number
Find your state, multiply the hourly rate by the hours you actually need per week, and compare that monthly number to assisted living in your area before committing. Then check whether your state's Medicaid program has a home-care waiver — that is a separate question with a separate answer.
Related: whether Medicaid will pay for it · what assisted living costs instead.
Common questions
Related
Say it back
How would you explain this to someone you love?
Two or three sentences, just as you’d say it. Gale reflects back what you focused on — a mirror, not a quiz.
When Home Care Is Not Enough
- —Falls that are becoming more frequent, or a fall with an injury
- —Wandering, leaving the stove on, or other unsafe behavior when alone
- —A caregiver who is exhausted to the point of their own health suffering
Sudden confusion, a fall with a head injury, chest pain, or trouble breathing is an emergency: call 911.
This article covers typical home care rates by state. It is general information, not medical or financial advice; confirm current rates with agencies in your area.
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References
- 1.Genworth Financial / CareScout (2025). Genworth and CareScout Release Cost of Care Survey Results for 2024. Genworth Financial (investor press release). link ✓Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 50 of them.
- 2.Administration for Community Living (2025). Costs of Care. ACL.gov (LongTermCare.gov content). link ✓Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 48 of them.
- 3.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: 31-1120 Home Health and Personal Care Aides. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS). linkSource carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 43 of them.
- 4.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025). Home & Community Based Services Authorities. Medicaid.gov. linkSource carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 39 of them.
- 5.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Home Health and Personal Care Aides — Occupational Outlook Handbook. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. linkSource carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 30 of them.
- 6.U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (2016). Fact Sheet #25: Home Health Care and the Companionship Services Exemption Under the FLSA. U.S. Department of Labor. linkSource carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 28 of them.
6 sources, numbered by first appearance. General health information, not medical advice. AI-assisted editorial content — citations link their sources. Editorial policy