The child care industry is on the cusp of a crisis
The child care industry is on the cusp of a crisis
In 10 days, the U.S. will fall off a "child care cliff" — that's the day pandemic-era funding for the industry runs out.
Why it matters: The funding amounted to a $24 billion Band-aid patched over an industry that's long struggled. When the bandage comes off, the state of child care in the U.S. is likely to be even worse than it was before 2020.
Childcare should be government-subsidized to the point that it is free. It’s an extremely straightforward way to ensure women are able to participate in the workforce at an equitable rate and it is another way to prevent childhood poverty from causing knock-on effects for the rest of a person’s life. It is one of the simplest ways to raise all of society up.
Uh, yeah. Everybody knows that. Women can't participate in the workforce? Childhood poverty funnels kids into the military and prisons while ensuring gun violence remains a national boogeyman? That's kind of the point. These regressive outcomes are exactly what the American political right wants.
100%
It's really demoralizing to see such a low-cost (relatively), but high value policy cast aside so easily
I'm sorry but I don't want to pay for someone else's child care. You had the kid, now you pay for it.
Nobody wants to pay for anything, but we do it because having taxes to pay for shit like an army is kinda important. Do I want to pay for the army? No. Is it important? Yes.
If everyone only just does whatever the fuck they want, the US goes from stable and prosperous to a clown car of overweight chucklefucks who disagree with each other on half of everything. Sound familiar?
That's an incredibly myopic view. All of society benefits from well-educated, healthy, and cared-for citizens. Which is to say nothing of the value created for the society and you individually when others are able to join the workforce, pursue an education, or indulge a creative vision because they are able to contribute to the greater whole around them. I'm going to be charitable and just assume that you have no real knowledge on the economics or policy concerns involved with the subject and aren't just some chud who wants women shackled to the kitchen appliances and marginalized groups condemned to a cycle of poverty and imprisonment.
I don't have fuckin kids and I'm not going to, but fuck me, I'm not naive enough to think that not taking care of kids is the answer.
An educated and involved populace is a win for everybody in a democracy. The more we make sure children have access to healthy food, healthcare, and education, the more those kids will grow up to be smart, capable, and involved members of society who are a net benefit to society.
This is dangerously short sighted. Should only parents pay taxes for schools? What sort of society do you think that would produce?
I don't want to pay for some else's military defense. I don't want to pay for roads I don't drive on. I don't want to pay for services I don't use. Let's just go back to before governments existed and make the country a free-for-all!
we live in a social society of reproducing humans. if you dont want to live in that society, you are free to go find a different one. you absolutely benefit from other peoples children.
yours is the attitude that drives the conservative, me-first complete-lack-of-empathy 'political movement'.
im not sure if you intended it, but you are part of the problem.
I'm sorry but I don't want to pay for someone else's child care. You had the kid, now you pay for it.
Who's going to change your diaper in the nursing home?
Would you rather have kids just running around doing whatever the hell they want?
Fuck off with your toxic individualism. We exist as communities and as such all must shoulder some of the burdens of a limited number for the community good. Those who are more able to shoulder that burden should do so.
It’s too fucking expensive to be reasonable. $20k a year for fucking childcare. That’s almost $10/hr wage. Tons of jobs around here don’t even make that much. Realistically you need to make even more because there’s taxes coming out of the $10/hr. Anything less and you’re better off just not working at all. Then you need to calculate your bills. If you need to pay rent, utilities, gas, car payment, etc you need to be making $25-$30/hr to get by. Realistically a single mother isn’t making it on her own and it’s disgusting.
Not to mention that $20k doesn’t get you jack shit. We still need to supply food, diapers, drinks, and even a fucking pack and play for her to nap in as well as a fucking high chair. All that $20k gets you is a couple people sitting in a room with 20 other kids letting them all do their own thing.
Fuck childcare
My friend and his wife are both high school teachers out in a rural town. They have been teaching for a decade and have two children together. They budget HARD to get by, even selling their home and downsizing. Childcare is killing them.
He was/is considering quitting his job to take care of the kids during the day and taking a nightshift at Walmart. Instead he opted to abandon his yard and sell his rideon lawnmower to hold them over for a few more months.
They just don't have the money to pay for childcare. It's half their income...
At the same time I get the prices. Childcare workers need to eat, too...I feel like it's the rising cost of everything else that's the real problem
I’m not completely sold. I’m going to do some math, but full disclaimer, I am using national averages and recommendations so mileage will vary.
That being said, $20k/ year comes down to roughly $9.62/hr to send our kids to daycare.
So let’s figure out an estimate of what it should cost. First we need the salaries of the employees. Average wage for daycare staff in the US is $11.26/hr. Now we need to find how much each kid pays to their wage. Recommended staffing levels say a maximum of 6 kids per adult. Every daycare I know is understaffed so we’re being generous with 6:1. So $11.26/hr divided by 6 children is $1.88 per child per hour.
Now there are other expenses. So on average your employees wages are 15-30% of your revenue. Note, there was no guideline for childcare, this is a general business guideline.
So we have a range. That $1.88 needs to be 15-30% of what that child costs to send. $1.88 divided by 0.15 is $12.53 and $1.88 divided by 0.3 is $6.26.
Now, I live in a really awful place with a lot of corruption. I don’t have much faith in much of the national averages. In fact during my research the national average cost is only $14k but the $20k is an actual value of what me and my wife pay at one of the cheapest daycares in the area. It’s also a poor city. Most of the people I know make under $10/hr. Many make minimum wage which is currently only $7.25/hr. I’d wager more heavily on the $8-$8.50 range for employees which makes our final cost range $4.40 to $9.50 which means best case we are still paying slightly over what we should expect.
Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic since my city constantly ranks as one of the worst places to live in the country but I think childcare is just another division run by a bunch of for profit companies trying to squeeze everything they can and screw over as many people as possible.
This isn't even a new problem. I used to work in an office with a lot of women back in 2006. One decided to have a kid and after she and her husband did the math, it was more economical for her to quit to take care of the child than for her to keep working. Other women had to have family members provide childcare so they could get by because without their salary they'd be screwed or they were single mothers.
I'm so frustrated paying $950 a month. My kid just got old enough to go into a lower tier, but right after that, they raised the prices across the board so I still pay the same...
If they have like 30 kids at about $950 each, where is all of that money going? All of the ladies that work there make minimum wage.
30 kids at $950/mo is $28,500.
Each FTE, at $15/hr minimum wage, is $2400. But employees cost more than just their wage, between taxes, Medicare, benefits, etc. National average is 1.25 - 1.4 times their wage. Let’s call it 1.3. Each FTE is now $3120.
Then staffing ratios. Childcare.gov recommends, for 4 year olds, no less than 1:8 and no more than 16 students in a class. So you’ve got at least 4 teachers, minimum, for your 30 students.
Payroll for teachers alone is $12,480. And you need someone to run the books and keep the lights on. Even if that person (who may even be the owner) is paid $15/hr, and can cover for a teacher in a pinch when there’s sick/personal time, now you’re at $15,600 in payroll.
You’ve got $12,900 left in monthly budget. Haven’t paid for rent (in a pretty large, properly zoned place), or insurance (I imagine that’s a costly industry to insure)…or toys, or books, or classroom materials, or hygiene supplies, or electricity, or heat.
And I should hope that whoever is running this, who may even be the manager/emergency teacher, is doing so for more than they could earn at McDonalds. Especially given that that person probably has a college degree, is a trained first-responder, and has to deal with a lot of shit as part of their job, both literally and figuratively.
Staffing ratio for toddlers is double that by the way. 13-35 months, ratio 1:4 and no more than 8 in a group (as recommended by childcare.gov). So if we’re talking 30 two year olds, we’re talking eight teachers, at 15/hr, payroll is almost all of tuition.
We need paid maternity and paternity leave. A lot of the cost in childcare is going to pay a bunch of people minimum wage to take care of newborns. It's not good for the new borns who still won't get enough attention, it's not good for the overworked caretakers, and it's not good for their parents where half their paycheck is going to child care. The only people benefiting are the employers who can get even more labor out of employees who should be home taking care of their baby.
Speaking up as the director for a smaller nonprofit after school care company. There's lot to consider here. Our main facility is located in unincorporated LA county because it's nestled right between two proper cities. For the schools we have our program at the minimum wage is currently $15.50/H, but our main office falls under the unincorporated LA county rules (even though we operate in a lower income area and this min wage is intended for places like Beverly Hills when we're over an hour north of LA) so the dozen workers here we have to pay $16.90 minimum. We love our employees though so we often try to beat minimum wage for them, averaging about $17/H over our 60 employees.
This still leaves us with a higher cost for our services than we'd like - I think our breakdown is about $6.50 per hour which is still a lot for our local economy and we often give discounts. The child care resource center helps but the qualifications are ridiculous to meet for some reason so even though over half of our families should qualify, only about a fourth actually receive funding. Because of all these things, I only make about 45k/year while being one of two people (the other being my boss) running this company of 60 employees servicing 300 students.
State and federal govts need to step in to provide funding for child care. I shouldn't have to be worrying about my own financial stability with how many responsibilities I have at work and our families shouldn't have to cry to me on the phone about them not being able to afford proper care (please know I don't brush these parents off, we are kind people that give heavy discounts to families in need). It's a disgusting situation all around. After working in this industry for over a decade it makes me not want to have any kids of my own, ever.
P.S. Fuck the Boys and Girls Club executives. We share school campuses with their programs and we are often intervening in fights between kids on their program cause they notoriously understaff their sites and only ever seem to have 17 or 18 year olds working for them who have no idea what they're doing.