Overview:
Millions of unpaid family caregivers in the US often sacrifice their own health, finances, and career to manage round-the-clock medical and personal care for loved ones. This profound act of love often leads to isolation, physical and financial strain, and burnout, requiring real community support rather than just quiet admiration.
Look around you. Someone you know — a family member, a neighbor, a close friend — is caring for a loved one who can no longer fully look after themselves. We see them. We admire them. But do we really understand what their days look like, what their sacrifices feel like, or the full weight of their role? Across the country, millions are living this reality — and most of us barely know it.
Unseen and under-appreciated
Family caregivers are the unseen workforce – the invisible backbone that props up our health and long-term care systems, preventing their structural and financial collapse. Under-appreciated, they toil every day, without applause, pay, or rest.
Family caregivers “often provide complex care with little or no training, sacrificing their financial future and their own health, and too often doing it alone,” says Myechia Minter-Jordan, the CEO of AARP, The American Association of Retired Persons.
Caring for a parent, child, or relative is both a labor of love and a tremendous responsibility – a challenge and an opportunity to serve someone special. A parent or older relative from whom we’ve received care, guidance and love, or a child we brought into this world. It is a job willingly taken, often with no prior experience, training, or information. Devoting time and energy to this task invariably requires the caregiver to sacrifice or put on hold other priorities, opportunities, and interests.
Who are these caregivers?
The AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving publish a survey on caregiving in the US every five years. According to their latest report published last summer, the number of family caregivers has jumped to 63 million – an increase of 20 million, or 45%, in the past decade.
In 2025, nearly one in four adults provided ongoing care for an adult or a child with a complex medical condition or disability. 59 million people care for an adult family member. Today’s family caregivers are younger, more diverse, and more likely to be juggling multiple roles. Three in five caregivers are women – no surprise. On average, caregivers are 51 years old.
Diving into the report’s details, we learn that one in four caregivers provides 40+ hours of care weekly and that one-third have been doing so for five years or more. Nearly a third of all caregivers, and half of those under 50, are raising children under 18 while caring for an adult loved one.
An estimated 5–7 million students are simultaneously caregiving and attending school. 34% of all family caregivers – roughly 21 million – are seniors over 65, more than half of whom have two or more diseases themselves.
What exactly do caregivers do?
The answer is: almost everything. Two-thirds assist with the most fundamental and intimate tasks of human life — bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, and helping a loved one move safely through their own home. The vast majority also manage the practical demands of daily living: preparing meals, handling finances, shopping, doing laundry, and providing transportation. But the work goes further still.
Caregiving has become more intense over time, with half of all caregivers handling complex medical and nursing tasks — managing multiple medications, administering injections, performing wound care, and operating equipment such as catheters, feeding tubes, and ventilators — procedures most of us would find daunting under any circumstances, yet millions of family members carry out daily, at home, with little or no formal training.
On top of all of this, they coordinate care across specialists, navigate insurance systems, and advocate fiercely for their loved one’s voice within a healthcare system that was never designed with them in mind. And woven through every single task is something no job description can capture: the steady, daily offering of presence — the companionship, the encouragement, the quiet act of showing up for someone who needs you.
Caregiving demands sacrifice
70% of adult caregivers under 65 work, and half of them experience work disruptions and other adverse impacts. Nearly half of all caregivers have experienced at least one major financial impact—such as taking on debt, stopping savings, or being unable to afford food.
One in five caregivers reports being in fair or poor health, and nearly one in four say they struggle to care for their own health due to caregiving responsibilities. Nearly one in four caregivers report feeling socially isolated—a number that’s growing steadily. All this, in addition to everything they’ve given up to shoulder this responsibility.
While 11.2 million family caregivers now receive some compensation, most are still unpaid.
Societal impact
In addition to this priceless contribution to their families, caregivers have a vast impact on society as well, touching virtually every dimension of life. As a collective, they provide the lion’s share of long-term care for older adults who can no longer function independently with emotional support and assistance.
Family caregivers in the US perform the equivalent of $873.5 billion worth of labor annually — an amount significantly larger than the annual revenue of any publicly traded or private company. Accounting for this labor would increase the US GDP between 3 and 4%.
Family caregivers embody and transmit our core values. They sustain the economy at an enormous personal cost, prevent the collapse of the healthcare system, shape the American workforce, hold families and communities together, and expose deep social inequalities. Their absence would create a national crisis.
A societal force
Family caregivers are not simply a support system for individuals. They are a societal force — one that sustains the healthcare system, props up the economy, holds families together, preserves human dignity, and reflects our deepest values as a civilization.
Their impact is simultaneously economic, medical, cultural, moral, and deeply personal. To honor them is not sentiment — it is recognition of a truth that our institutions have been slow to acknowledge: that caregiving is the work upon which everything else depends.
Caregivers need care too!
It’s important to understand that family caregivers need care too, as I describe in my 2023 article. Let’s go beyond recognizing and admiring the stalwart caregivers in our midst. Let’s ensure that they are cared for and feel supported.
As Jim Rohn, the author and motivational speaker, said, “One person caring about another represents life’s greatest value.” Let’s recognize, honor, and stand behind family caregivers in the US and across the world for their sacrifice, their love, and their care.
