The "invisible workforce" of family caregivers

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Roughly 1 in 4 Americans now identifies as a family caregiver. That share has risen dramatically over the past decade. With more people needing care and limited options for affordable long-term care services in the United States, caregivers are strained—often mentally and financially. On today’s show, Debra Whitman, chief public policy officer of AARP, joins Kimberly to unpack how this “invisible workforce” fits into the broader economy and how we can make caregiving more sustainable for families.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"Caregiving in the US 2025" from AARP
"The number of “sandwich generation” caregivers is growing" from Marketplace
"If Americans Were Paid For Their Caregiving, They Would Make More Than $1.1 Trillion" from the National Partnership for Women and Families
"Returning to the Workforce After Being a Caregiver" from Harvard Business Review
"Invisible crisis: America’s caregivers and the $600 billion unpaid cost of their labor" from ABC News
"Caregiving in the US 2025: Caring Across States" from AARP

We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	At Pluralsight, we don't just teach skills.
0:02.8	We are building the tech workforce, who deliver results fast, accelerated by top-tier content.
0:08.6	Lead with confidence, lead with expertise.
0:11.1	Visit us at Pluralsight.com to tap in and learn more.
0:27.8	Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:36.1	This week, all week long, we're going to be getting smarter about what many people describe as the caregiving crisis in the United States.
0:39.1	There's a growing gap between the number of Americans who need care, whether it's older adults or people with disabilities, and the number of actual
0:45.0	caregivers available to support them. Plus, long-term care services remain unaffordable for most
0:51.5	people. So the bulk of this work ends up being done by family members or
0:56.3	friends. The latest data from AARP shows roughly one in four Americans say they are a family caregiver.
1:04.5	So that's what we're talking about today. AARP has been tracking family caregiving since the 90s,
1:09.5	and here to unpack some of their latest research is Deborah Whitman,
1:12.8	Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer of AARP.
1:17.4	Deb, welcome to the show.
1:19.2	Thanks for having me, Kimberly.
1:21.1	You prefer to refer to this as a crisis of care rather than a caregiving crisis.
1:27.3	Why is that distinction important?
1:29.8	Because it's not a problem that people need care. It's more of a problem that we're not set up
1:36.5	to provide them the care that they need. So I like to say that at some point in your life,
1:42.7	you will either be giving care or need care
1:45.7	yourself. And as we're all living longer, the numbers are just growing. Our recent study of
1:52.7	caregiving in the United States found that in 2025, we have more than 63 million adults,
	...

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