Times Chronicle & Public Spirit
Child care crisis hampers pandemic recovery
Costs too high despite low-pay for workers
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery, Montgomery County parents face a dilemma — a child care dilemma.
Even as jobs and businesses return and schools re-open, parents find their options for child care — already slim pickings before the pandemic — have dwindled even more, hobbling the ability of many parents, mostly mothers, to return to work and putting children just starting out in life at an educational and developmental disadvantage.
More than “53,800 Montgomery County residents resigned or lost their jobs in the first three months of the pandemic. To some extent, these job losses were a result of approximately 200 business closures across the county at the onset of the pandemic” according to the U.S. Department of Labor as cited in a new report on the impact of the pandemic by Children First, the non-profit advocacy group formerly known as Public Citizens for Children and Youth.
Parents also left their jobs to care for children because, with schools closed, there was no one else to tend to the first priority in their lives — their children.
In large measure “due to extraordinary federal and state financial supports for businesses, as of September 2021, there have been over 600 Montgomery County businesses that have opened since the onset of the pandemic,” according to the Department of Labor. The official unemployment rate returned to the county’s pre-pandemic level of 3.7 percent by November 2021.
But with inflation rising, the ability to go back to work and cover those rising costs is hampered because “the shortage of child care is making it very hard to work more hours, or even simply go to work,” Children First found
“The average cost of fulltime child care across the state is at least $12,530 a year for infants or toddlers; $10,640 for pre-schoolaged children, and $9,800 for afterschool and summer care, and these costs are expected to continue to rise in 2022,” the authors wrote, citing figures from Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, Office of Child Development and Early Learning. “Even at the current costs, a year of child care is likely to be more expensive than attending a year of college at West Chester University.”
“We’re hearing so clearly how much it costs to provide high-quality care, but our parents can’t afford to pay these increasing prices, and the parents that need it the most, the parents that absolutely must work every day are the ones that can afford it the least and so this is a completely failed business model,” Montgomery County Commissioners’
Chairwoman Val Arkoosh said during a recent roundtable on the issue.
In addition to the cost, there is an additional hardship created by fewer childcare centers left standing after the pandemic.
“Montgomery County was among a small group of counties in the state to use federal COVID aid to buoy the child care sector, directing $12 million in discretionary emergency funds to child care centers and families in need of child care assistance,” Children First reported.
“Yet, temporary county, state and federal aid was not robust enough to stem closures. Since the start of the pandemic, child care supply in the county has plummeted by 26 percent as of March 2022. Over the same time, 56 providers closed, including seven high-quality programs. Simply put, the child care sector has been decimated,” the report found.
“We still have a staffing crisis that’s going on, and I know that that’s across the board in all different sectors, but child care is really what’s driving our economy and making sure that parents can get to work,” Mai Miksic, early childhood education policy director for Children First, said during a forum on the problems facing child care. “So until we can really think about how to solve this crisis we’re not going to be able to fully recover from the pandemic.
That crisis is driven by low pay and high stress. The Children First report found that although they are charged with caring for and educating our most precious resource, child care workers make less per hour than people working in retail.
“Child care costs are expected to keep rising as child care centers close due to the gap between what families can afford to pay, and in turn, what child care providers can afford to pay their staff. As of September 2021, there were approximately 580 fewer child care workers in Montgomery County compared to the pre-pandemic level,” according to the report.
“This massive exodus is a result of low wages coupled with the risk and stress of caring for children during the pandemic. In that same period, average wages for all workers in the county rose by approximately 7 percent, but the median wage for child care staff has remained stubbornly
low. As of September 2021, child care staff were earning nearly 32 percent less than employees at big box retail stores or fast-food franchises.”
If child care centers increase the tuition charged to parents to cover the rate of pay needed to attract qualified staff, “it will put the cost of child care further out of reach for families and drive down enrollment. It’s a vicious cycle that is devastating the child care sector, making it very difficult for parents to earn a living and for employers to hire the workers they need,” according to the report.
As a result, part of the difficulty employers and businesses are having finding workers is driven by the fact that an absence of affordable child care options is keeping mothers home with their children and out of the workplace.
“Data shows that men returned to work at three times the rate of women within the first 12 months of the pandemic. As of February 2022, there were approximately 3,300 fewer women working in (Montgomery County), mirroring the ‘she-cession’ widely reported across the country, while the number of men working increased by about 1,900 compared to February 2020,” according to U.s Department of Labor’s, Bureau of Labor Statistics
“These trends are especially troubling because, before the pandemic, 77 percent of families had all present parents in the workforce, meaning 23 percent of the county’s families had only one or no source of income for their household,” according to Children First.
“We should absolutely provide these services to every kid in Norristown, and in Montgomery County and in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” state Rep. Matthew Bradford, D-70th Dist., said at last month’s roundtable. “But the reality is — when our child care breaks down when it is stretched to the limit, which it currently is here in this commonwealth, and frankly across this country, it is the business community that is unable to attract and retain the best of our employees.”