When dance/electronic band Jungle performed at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens this September, 25-year-old Natalie Abatemarco didn’t bat an eye when shelling out around $100 for a ticket.
Her 9-to-5 job is as a media content manager, but the East Village resident has an easy, lucrative side-hustle in babysitting, raking in as much as $800 a month — sometimes without ever leaving her apartment building.
Typically thought of as a job for high schoolers and professional nannies looking to pick up extra hours, babysitting has become a popular gig for Gen Zers and millennials looking to make some extra cash on top of their regular salaries
“It surprises people when I say I’m a babysitter in my mid-20s,” Abatemarco told The Post with a giggle. “They look down on it because they think it’s just a job for teenagers.”
The native Long Islander earns around $30 an hour, plus occasional tips, assisting families in her neighborhood. A few nights a week, she tends to various children, helping with homework and bedtime, while their parents are out on the town. It’s easy and fun.
“New York City is expensive and babysitting is such an underrated side hustle,” she said. “I create my own schedule, get to hang out with kids who’ve become like family and make good money from a couch.”
Indeed. Earlier this year, the Big Apple was crowned the most expensive city to live in as a single person in a study commissioned by Zillow.
Abatemarco never even considered taking up the mantle until a neighbor randomly asked if she’d be available to watch her brood one evening in late 2022. She soon became a regular Mary Poppins for no less than six families in her building and has more business than she can handle.
“The money I make babysitting doesn’t supplement the cost of living in New York City 1000%,” Abatemarco said. “But it does provide a little cushion that allows me to enjoy fun things like unplanned dinners and drinks with friend around the city or getting tickets to a show — things that I, otherwise, couldn’t afford.”
She boasted about the benefits of babysitting in a TikTok post that attracted more than 774,000 viewers. In it, she gleefully talked of how, once the kiddos go to sleep, she has freedom to do her other work, snack and relax on a couch while being paid — perks you don’t get as a bartender or Uber driver.
“Can we normalize babysitting as an adult,” she said, noting that people often think it’s just something “cute” that she does, when really “I am a business woman, I am an entrepreneur.”
Her followers seemed to agree that childcare is one of the best kept secrets when it comes to a secondary stream of income.
One commenter on the post claimed to have earned $500 in a day, without breaking a sweat.
“I make an extra $3,000 a month with babysitting!,” said another commenter, who works as a full-time realtor.
Manhattanite Nicole Ashley, 29, told The Post that watching the kids for her neighbors in Midtown has been the “perfect” source of discretionary funds.
“I like to treat myself to nice dinners at cool restaurants around the city like Cucina Alba, and this definitely helps me do that,” said Ashley, a full-time lifestyle photographer who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons.
The millennial has made out like a bandit over the past four years, caring for little ones and advertising her sitting services via community bulletin boards or through SitterCity, an app that connects parents to qualified caregivers based on references, background checks and identity-verification screenings.
While she sometimes feel as though her friends in high-powered jobs with big salaries look down on her babysitting, she feels no shame.
“A lot people who are around my age don’t even realize how much money you can make in babysitting,” she said, adding that the benefits aren’t solely financial.
“Spending this much quality time with children is really preparing me to be an amazing mother when the time comes.”
