We’ve all depended on childcare at least once in our lives, from parents to family members to childcare centers and beyond. Yet, despite our common thread, the childcare industry often goes ignored, undervalued, and underinvested. As a result the childcare system central to our social fabric, our economy, and our communities is crumbling against the backdrop of an all-consuming, polarized election cycle, and we, the voters, must combat the threat that poses.
Across America, 61% of working families lack a formal childcare arrangement. A majority of the near-400,000 childcare workers, primarily women of color, can’t afford their own services with the salaries they make. 70,000 childcare programs covering 3.2 million children and 232,000 jobs are at risk of shutting down. Of the 3,143 US counties, 2,750 have childcare costs that exceed the federally recommended 7% of family income per child, despite the fact that many families must bring home two incomes to make ends meet and depend on childcare to keep themselves in the workforce.
In response to this worsening crisis, Community Change Action and our partners staged National Day Without Child Care on Monday, May 13 – a day of action where childcare organizers hosted over 85 events across 26 states, and over 1,300 providers and parents closed their doors or called out of work to demonstrate just how essential childcare is. We believe that families should not have to choose between their children and economic security, and that care providers deserve not just a living wage, but a thriving wage. While the crisis we’re experiencing is undeniable, we’ve proven before that it doesn’t have to be this way.
How do we save the crumbling childcare industry before it’s too late?
Consider that American families are paying between 8 and 19 percent of their income on childcare, while across a majority of the nation, tuition for daycare rivals college tuition and mortgage payments – oftentimes superseding these ubiquitous economic indicators. In real terms, this means that American families are paying anywhere between $5,357 and $17,171 for childcare, with the national average hovering at over $11,000 – more than 32% of median income for a single parent and over 10% for a married couple.
Source: Child Care at a Standstill: Price and Landscape Analysis, ChildCare Aware of America, 2022
It’s not just families struggling financially. In places like Wisconsin, childcare center workers earn a median hourly wage of $13.78 an hour, family-owned care providers earn $7.42 an hour, and 80% of care workers are not offered health insurance through their jobs – even though 52% of early childhood educators in Wisconsin have an associate’s degree or higher. To put this in perspective, the median hourly wage for a Wisconsinite with a high school degree is $20 an hour and with an associate’s degree, $28. Childcare provider wage inequity is not limited to Wisconsin – nationwide, childcare workers earn an median hourly wage of $14.60, around $30,000 annually and nearly $10 per hour less than the median of all occupations.
And yet, the most shocking part of the childcare crisis is that we were on the path to solving it – until we weren’t.
In March of 2021, with the country plagued by the COVID pandemic and an economic collapse exacerbated by Republican mismanagement, Democrats in Congress and President Biden enacted the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to help everyday Americans recover from the worst effects of a global pandemic and boost economic recovery. In addition to components like providing $1,400 in direct payments, cutting child poverty in half through expanding the child tax credit, and providing $21.6 billion for rental assistance programs, ARPA included $24 billion for a Child Care Stabilization Program. This historic investment in childcare reached more than 8 of every 10 licensed childcare centers nationwide, or approximately 220,000 providers, and helped provide care to over 9.5 million children through funding for wages, rent, supplies, and safety. ARPA literally helped keep the lights on for thousands of childcare centers and family homes at a time when working families and children needed them most.
In addition, 2022 saw New Mexico voters overwhelmingly support the guaranteed right to early childhood education via a Democrat-led constitutional amendment on childcare, the first of its kind in any state. Supporting this direct investment for working families and children was a priority for Community Change Action and its in-state partner Organizers in the Land of Enchantment (OLÉ), who worked to persuade and mobilize over 100,000 voters of color and high-opportunity voters in support of the amendment. As a result, 70% of voters approved of providing a projected $236 million in funding for the expansion of pre-kindergarten access and pay raises for early childhood workers.
Yet, despite overwhelming support amongst voters for affordable, high-quality childcare, Congressional Republicans continue to derail the progress we’ve made combating the childcare crisis in favor of protecting corporate interests and lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans. In September 2023, Congress allowed the Child Care Stabilization Program, which awarded an average $177,000 in assistance for providers, to run out, threatening the survival of at least 70,000 childcare centers nationwide. In addition, the lack of any Republican support allowed ARPA’s expanded Child Tax Credit to expire, leading to a near-automatic 139% increase in child poverty nationwide. Some states have worked to fill gaps left by the folding of federal programs, but no amount of state funding can replace permanent, federal support like the $16 billion President Biden recently requested from Congress to extend supplemental childcare funding. Clearly, we need elected representatives who prioritize childcare over corporations and private interests in order to fix this crisis permanently.
Americans proved in 2020 and 2022 that a lack of affordable, high-quality childcare is a choice. Together, we backed candidates and ballot measures who delivered historic victories to provide relief for millions of children and families across the country, including higher childcare provider wages and expanded access to childcare, by making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share. For the sake of our families, communities, and economy, we cannot allow ourselves to go backwards now.
This year, childcare is once again on the ballot. Although there are no initiatives or constitutional amendments to act on, we have the opportunity to fight for solutions to this crisis by voting for and supporting a slate of federal and local candidates willing to reinstate the childcare funding we recently lost and fight for the modern childcare system we deserve. This includes four Senate races and nine House races that will determine control of Congress in Community Change Action’s five priority states alone, four states of which Biden only won by tens of thousands of votes in 2020. Indeed, Biden himself has made investments in childcare a core component of his reelection campaign, while it is clear his Republican opponent, at best, will not.
Parents and providers are fed up with our childcare system. We need leaders who prioritize the millions of Americans trying to make ends meet over corporations and the wealthy, and this November 5th, voters, including over 19 million with children and 154,000 childcare workers in CCA’s five priority states, have the power to win elections and fix the childcare crisis together. We’ve proven in back-to-back national elections that universal, affordable, accessible, and culturally responsive childcare is attainable – it’s time for us to do so again.