On Monday, more than 1,000 U.S. child care providers planned to temporarily close their facilities or call in sick patients to participate in the country’s third annual “Day Without Child Care.” ing. The event aims to raise awareness of the important role of early learning professionals in the national economy and how little they earn for their labor.
“At the end of the day, we can’t make it work without more money,” Yessica Magdaleno, who has provided child care in Garden Grove, Calif., for nearly 23 years, said in a statement. She said: “People always tell me I should close the door and try working in another industry where it’s more lucrative, but I don’t want to do that.”
For some time after the COVID-19 pandemic began, society recognized that early learning professionals were the backbone of the workforce, allowing essential employees to work in the field. It seems that it recognized that it was.
The sector received an infusion of relief funding from the federal government, including a historic $24 billion. Tens of thousands of centers that would have been closed kept their staff on payroll and remained open. Parents were able to defend their position.
But that funding expired last fall. Since then, some states have increased their child care quotas, but many have not. An analysis released this month by the National Women’s Law Center found that in states that didn’t receive large funding increases, the percentage of families without child care has increased since federal funding dried up. Almost a quarter (23.1%) are unable to find or pay for care, up from 17.8% in the fall.
Workers planning to take time off are drawing attention to the inequalities they face in their jobs. Here are five surprising statistics that shed light on America’s broken child care system.
Days without childcare:Hundreds of providers closed as educators went on strike.The reason is as follows
$14.60
This is the median hourly wage for childcare workers in this country.
Although numbers vary by state and region, these professionals earn less because they work with younger children, a situation scholars refer to as the “wage penalty.” The poverty rate for early childhood education professionals is 7.7 times higher than the poverty rate for educators who teach students in kindergarten through eighth grade, according to a study by the Child Care Employment Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
The wage penalty is particularly pronounced among women of color, who make up the majority of the child care workforce. For example, a study by the University of California, Berkeley found that black early educators earn an average of $0.78 less per hour than their white counterparts.
$36,000
According to a report from Care.com, an online marketplace for finding such services, one in five households spends more than this amount on child care in a given year. This is nearly $12,000 more than the average cost (including tuition, fees, room and board) of attending her public four-year university.This is more than twice the average rent in the US
More broadly, the report found that nearly half of parents spend more than $18,000 a year on care costs. This is an amount that is out of reach for most families, especially those struggling to make ends meet.
But the vast majority of children whose parents would be eligible for subsidies through the largest federal child care program don’t receive them in any given month. That program, the Child Care and Developmental Block Grant, is severely underfunded.
75%
In some areas (such as Washington, D.C.), that’s the percentage of a single parent’s income that goes toward child care for an infant, according to a federal report last year. These costs are prohibitive even in the lowest-ranking states (such as South Dakota), where infant care accounts for a quarter of a single parent’s household income.
High child support costs often force parents to quit their jobs. But without alternatives, many single parents turn to the lowest-cost option, which can mean unlicensed providers.
14.4 million
According to Census data, this shows how many children under age 5 in the United States are in need of care because their parents are all in the workforce. This equates to approximately 2 to 3 children in this age group. In other words, households with multiple incomes are also struggling.
Many parents are forced to choose between work and raising children. In a 2023 poll of voters, more than a quarter of respondents with children under six said they or their family members had to take time off from work due to child care issues. Nearly six in 10 participants who did not work or only worked part-time said they would be willing to work full-time if they had access to high-quality, affordable childcare.
Childcare security:Billions of dollars in funding just expired. Costs are already rising.
$122 billion
According to a report by ReadyNation, that’s the amount of money being sucked out of the nation’s economy by the child care crisis. This crisis leaves parents jobless, young children’s learning trajectories impaired, and ultimately results in significant losses in income, productivity, and profits.
In other words, it’s not just parents who are suffering. Businesses and taxpayers will also be hit.
Why is the childcare system so broken down? Marcy Whitebook, director emeritus of the Child Care Employment Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said the biggest reasons are that such care is too expensive for families and there is insufficient public funding. . “Public investments often become temporary because policymakers decide that the problem they were trying to solve is over. Of course, child care needs are not temporary.”
“It’s just a matter of time before the system collapses,” said Kishia Saffold, a child care center owner and operator in Alabama.
