![]() As Angela Garbes, author of the new book Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, said in a recent interview: The workforce’s low pay cannot be disentangled from complex societal questions of who’s responsible for providing care and whether care work is both valuable and worthy of respect. It must be noted that these low wages are paid to a workforce that is almost entirely women and disproportionately women of color. ![]() A new analysis from the Center for American Progress shows that inflation-adjusted wages actually declined for child-care professionals from 2012 to 2019. With personnel costs so high and little public funding, even the painful parent fees can’t fully cover expenses many programs have no choice but to balance their budget with low wages. States’ maximum child-to-adult ratios for child-care programs are rightly low, commonly 1:4 for infants and 1:6 to 1:8 for toddlers. Young children, however, require heavy supervision and engagement. An elementary-school teacher is single-handedly responsible for 20 or so students, often (too) many more. A restaurant worker can serve hundreds of people over the course of a shift. Why is child-care work so devalued? The reason seems to be an unfortunate mix of economic constraints and cultural attitudes.Ĭhild care is a tremendously expensive service to provide because it requires a lot of human beings. With high turnover and lean staff, administrators have been forced to ask educators to work extra hours. Almost all are hourly workers, and the benefits are limited-according to an analysis by researchers at the the Economic Policy Institute, only one in five has access to employer-sponsored health insurance, and only one in 10 has a retirement plan. The median wage for child-care workers in 2021 was $13.22 an hour, or about $27,500 a year. More than 16,000 programs have closed permanently. The sector is still down more than 85,000 jobs from February 2020. But child-care programs have not been able to keep up, even as many charge parents more. The Great Resignation spurred by the pandemic has led many industries, including retail and fast food, to raise their compensation packages. Read: Why child care is so ridiculously expensive Until child care becomes a well-compensated and well-respected job, all efforts to give parents more affordable choices will fall short. And now there isn’t even enough expensive child care to go around. The financial paradox of child care is that although it’s expensive for parents-often obscenely so-providers are paid a pittance. Demand is high, but supply is woefully low. In big cities and small towns, red states and blue, parents are hitting a wall of wait lists. Because of an inability to recruit and retain staff, many child-care programs (of all types, including day cares and preschools) are operating at reduced capacity, while some have closed entirely. ![]() The fact that military families are struggling so badly to find care for their kids is a keeled-over canary for the rest of us the military’s child-care system is often held up as America’s best-case scenario.Īmerica’s fragile child-care equilibrium has shattered. The problem is not isolated to one branch or base. The San Diego Union-Tribune recently reported that a staggering 4,000-plus families like Taylor’s are on the Navy’s waiting list in San Diego alone. But Taylor’s son has been on various wait lists for 21 months-since before he was born. As a military family, they are eligible for a low-cost slot at the on-base child-development center or, failing that, assistance paying for a community program. ![]() Taylor and her husband, a Navy doctor, live in San Diego. Megan Taylor was expecting child-care help. ![]()
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