A woman in Maryland has been in charge of an early learning center for thirteen years. She serves 150 children, employs about thirty people, and has seen her industry subtly decline all around her. The issue is not brand-new. The pandemic did not bring it. In 2018, she was aware of an impending event that would eventually make it nearly impossible to hire a qualified teacher at a salary that any respectable person could truly live on.
There weren’t many headlines about that story. Seldom does it. Anyone who is willing to look closely has been able to see the child care workforce crisis for years. The average child care provider makes about $22,000 annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is below the federal government’s income threshold for determining eligibility for its own poverty assistance programs for a single adult. To put it another way, those responsible for fostering the cognitive and emotional growth of America’s youngest children are frequently eligible for the same safety net programs as the families they assist. That seems incredibly contradictory, but the system has operated in this manner for decades without arousing the political urgency that it most likely merits.
There is a structural component to the dysfunction. Child care facilities are unable to raise wages in the same manner as a tech company. Families’ tuition payments are nearly the only source of revenue, and the majority of families are already overburdened. The math has never been accurate. The difference between what a center can pay and what an employee at a restaurant or warehouse can make quickly narrows when minimum wage laws are raised, even slightly. Early childhood education begins to appear more like a sacrifice than a career.
This disparity became evident due to the pandemic. According to research from The Century Foundation, an estimated 20,000 child care programs closed during the first two years of COVID-19—roughly 10% of the pre-pandemic supply. The closures accelerated as temporary federal relief funding eventually dried up. Even fewer options were available to parents who already had few. Because they had no reliable child care, many mothers in particular completely stopped working. This was felt by the labor market. It was noted by economists. After that, the discussion mostly continued.
A workforce that has never fully recovered is what’s left. The fact that there is no sustainable funding model to support them and the requirement to offer competitive wages are at odds with each other. Given what research indicates about the first five years of brain development, it makes sense that training requirements for early childhood educators have grown over time, but salaries have not kept up with these demands. In order to obtain a credential needed for employment, a worker may take out student loans, then work for years in a position that will never be able to pay back the debt. Once you say it aloud, no one can understand the arrangement.
Additionally, there is a talent pipeline issue that receives insufficient attention. Child care has always relied on individuals who are motivated more by the mission than by the money. The number of workers who are prepared to make the financial sacrifice is declining. Additionally, researchers are concerned about the narrowing demographics of those who enter and remain in the field. The National Institute for Early Education Research has made clear how difficult it is becoming for centers to hire at all, much less effectively.
There have been studies, proposals, and sometimes pilots of solutions. The policy architecture includes expanded public pre-K, new federal grant programs, and shared public funding to offset teacher salaries. The kind of persistent political will that views child care as a fundamental component of economic infrastructure rather than as a specialized women’s issue appears to be lacking. Because that is precisely what it is in real life.
When child care fails, it does not go unnoticed. It is evident in small business productivity, workforce participation rates, and the career paths of women who had to make decisions. For years, the data has been screaming this. Simply put, screaming data has never been sufficient on its own.
