Child care providers rally for better pay, more affordable access for parents

(TND) — Child care workers are calling in sick or closing shop Monday to call attention to what they say is an industry in crisis.

They’re demanding better wages and affordable, equitable child care.

Community Change Action’s third-annual National Day Without Child Care features over 1,000 child care providers and parents at dozens of events planned across 26 states.

“I would say our child care system is in a state of crisis,” said Taryn Morrissey, an expert outside observer to Monday’s National Day Without Child Care. “It's too expensive for families. It's really hard to find. And then staffing is a challenge, and the staff who work in child care earn low wages and have few benefits.”

Morrissey is a professor of public administration and policy at American University whose work has focused on children and families.

Industry officials have decried the “cliff” that came with the end of pandemic-era government stimulus that helped child care programs keep their doors open. The American Rescue Plan Act passed in 2021 included $24 billion in child care stabilization grants. Those grants expired last fall.

A recent survey from Care.com showed families are spending, on average, 24% of their household income on child care expenses. That amounted to over $18,000 annually for nearly half of the survey’s respondents.

And the Bank of America Institute recently said that child care costs have surged, up 30% from before the pandemic.

Yet the median pay for child care workers is just $14.60 per hour, according to the Labor Department.

Labor is the biggest expense in child care, Morrissey said. Labor is about 60% to 70% of the costs.

Child care centers need to have high adult-to-child ratios to provide quality care.

“You can't cram, you know, 50 or 100 babies into one room with one adult and get the same kind of quality as you can between one adult and three babies, for example,” she said.

But with parents already struggling to afford child care, there’s pressure against rising salaries for child care workers.

“Right now, we do have high-quality early care and education, but the expenses are so high that they're out of reach for many families,” Morrissey said.

ReadyNation said last year that over half of Americans now live in child care “deserts,” where there are more than three young children for every licensed child care slot.

But Morrissey said we all benefit when all children, not just those from wealthier families, get the benefits to development provided by early childhood care.

Parents are sometimes forced to make difficult decisions between work and expensive child care.

ReadyNation said the lack of affordable child care is costing our country $122 billion every year in lost earnings for working parents, lost productivity for businesses, and lost tax revenue.

Almost two-thirds of parents of infants and toddlers facing child care struggles reported being late for work or leaving work early, according to ReadyNation.

More than half reported being distracted at work or missing full days of work.

A third of parents switched to part-time work to cover child care needs.

And 85% of caregivers said problems with child care hurt their efforts or time commitments at work.

Morrissey said it’s possible to fix the child care industry for both working parents and child care providers. But it’ll take public investment similar to how K-12 public schools are funded.

And the federal government, particularly, needs to step up to the plate, she said.

“In the United States, when a child turns 5, they become a public good and we all agree to invest our tax dollars in educating children, realizing that it's to our benefit as a society when children have educational opportunities and grow up to be productive members of society,” she said. “But before age 5, we say it's a private responsibility. And it becomes very expensive for families, and this is when parents are at their lowest earning years.”

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