Without state funds Pa. faces a child care crisis
Working parents rely on affordable and accessible child care to stay in the workforce. Unfortunately, there is a national crisis because child care programs are unable to recruit or retain quality teachers. That staff shortage is forcing classrooms and facilities to close, limiting critical child care access.
Without access to child care, many Pennsylvania parents cannot return to the workforce or are faced with the difficult decision to leave their jobs. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 566,000 of all Pennsylvania children younger than 6 years old (71%) had all of the adults in their household in the labor force. If one or more of the adults in their households cannot work, those hundreds of thousands of children and their families are at increased risk of becoming what are known as asset limited, income constrained, employed families.
ALICE families are the 27% of Pennsylvanians who work but struggle to survive. ALICE households earn more than the federal poverty level, but less than what it costs to live and work in the modern economy. A 2021 national ALICE report found that child care disruptions led to 23% of ALICE households working less in order to care for their children and 21% of ALICE households leaving the workforce completely due to lack of child care. Combined, 44% of Pennsylvania’s children live in households below the ALICE threshold, with income that doesn’t meet the basic costs of housing, child care, health care, transportation and a smartphone plan.
Child care is critical for more than our Pennsylvania ALICE families. Workforce shortages threaten our entire economy. If the commonwealth is to recover, it must maintain its workforce. For Pennsylvania’s working families to continue to contribute to this recovery, they must have the child care options they need.
Unless Pennsylvania lawmakers take the necessary steps to ensure child care is accessible, tens of thousands of children will remain on waiting lists across our state. In a Start Strong PA March 2022 survey of 994 Pennsylvania child care providers, 91% of respondents reported open staff positions, totaling over 7,000 vacant positions statewide. As a result, more than 32,400 children sit on waiting lists. In Lehigh County, 39 programs reported placing 1,015 children on waiting lists. These programs have closed 46 classrooms because they can not fill their combined 376 open staffing positions. If these programs could fill those positions, they would be able to serve an additional 1,603 children.
Not only is child care a critical workforce support, quality child care is a two-generation issue, essential for parents to work and a critical foundation of early learning and development for young children. Child care teachers engage with children at a time when brain growth is faster than any other time. Teachers’ relationships with the children in their classroom have a significant impact on how they develop communication skills, social skills, moderate behavior, express emotions and are able to process academic information.
Sadly, even though these professionals have a significant impact on our children, their families and our economic recovery, child care programs have increased staff turnover in this competitive labor market. With an average pay of less than $11 an hour, it is not surprising that this industry cannot compete with other industries offering higher wages for less specialized skills.
As our elected officials work to finalize the state budget in Harrisburg, I urge them to invest more in the child care workforce. Child care teachers not only deserve to be paid more for the important work they do on behalf of our children, but making these positions more attractive to potential workers boosts child care programs’ ability to recruit and retain qualified staff. Filling the thousands of open staff positions would allow programs to reopen classrooms providing more child care options for our state’s working families.