Early care and education remain among the most challenged professions in the United States, despite historic funding poured into the sector in the wake of the pandemic.
Early childhood educators earn an average hourly wage of $13.07, which puts them in the bottom 3% of workers nationwide. (By comparison, elementary and middle school teachers earn an average hourly wage of $31.80, and U.S. workers earn about $23 an hour for various occupations.)
According to the survey results, 2024 Early Childhood Labor Force IndexThe report, typically published every two years, is created and written by a team of researchers at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley.
The U.S. early care and education system was broken long before the pandemic, thanks to a dynamic where families can’t afford to pay more while health care providers can’t afford to pay lower rates. Ta. These costs are effectively subsidized by the meager wages that early childhood educators (the teachers and staff in these programs, about 98 percent of whom are women and half of whom are women of color) earn. This is the most important work that exists, said Caitlin MacLean, lead author of the report and CSCCE’s director of multi-state programs.
“Our child care staff, the majority of whom have some level of tertiary education, are nurturing children’s brains during the most critical period of development,” MacLean said at a press conference last week. . “[Yet] Early educators are paid so little that many worry about where their next meal will come from. ”
Early care and education programs have few employer-provided benefits, such as health insurance or retirement plans. Nearly half (43%) of early educators rely on public assistance such as Medicaid and food stamps to make ends meet, which the report estimates costs taxpayers $4.7 billion annually. .
Billions of federal dollars have been poured into this area in recent years. $39 billion under the American Rescue Plan Act — widely considered a success. Help stabilize the program and Preventing a wave of large-scale closures. However, most of these dollars expire in September 2023, with the remainder expiring about two weeks ago.
Without continued funding and more permanent solutions to this area, ARPA funding does not appear to be moving in any meaningful way. New data from the Labor Force Index highlights that reality.
“This funding was not designed to create an ideal child care system,” MacLean said. “It was to prevent a complete collapse of the system we had.”
Corinne Hendrickson’s situation shows why funding has not been able to transform the sector and the lives of the people who work in it.
Direct payments to providers from ARPA allowed Hendrickson to transform a licensed home-based child care program in rural Wisconsin and spend money she never had before. She hired an employee for the first time and was able to take time off from work for personal commitments. She made repairs and improvements to the building. She increased her own pay from $8 an hour to $12 an hour, and said she had enough extra money to buy her own children’s clothes and pay her monthly bills on time.
“Without ARPA funding, I would have closed and never reopened,” she said, adding that as a home service provider, “if I had closed, I would have lost my home.” .
But when ARPA funding expired last year, she had to make difficult decisions just to keep her new $12 an hour wage. She said her family’s tuition has increased three times in the past year, totaling $70 per week. She added that some families inquired about her program but backed out after learning it would cost between $259 and $281 a week, depending on the age of the child. It’s too expensive, they tell her.
“I don’t see that as a sustainable career at this point,” Hendrickson said. “Actually, it’s not.”
Nationally, wages for early childhood educators have increased by 4.6% in recent years, after adjusting for inflation, according to the index. This is still lower than for workers overall, whose wages have increased by an average of 4.9%, as well as fast food workers (5.2%) and retail workers (6.8%). The latter two professions are related because in recent years many educators have left their professions for jobs in food and retail, which pay the same or better and are much less stressful.
However, the national average is just an average. Since ARPA dollars expired, about a dozen states have made their own investments in early care and education to help programs and staff avoid the so-called “parenting cliff.” others have endured.
Some states have given even larger pay increases for early educators. In nine states and Washington, DC, early educators experienced wage increases of 10% or more. The highest increase was in Washington, D.C., where educator wages rose an average of 27.1 percent.
“This is serious work.”
Lyda Bartle is an infant and toddler teacher in Washington, D.C., and her salary has increased in recent years.
Bartle entered the field in 2016 and was making about $11 an hour at the time. Currently a lead teacher with a bachelor’s degree, she earns the equivalent of approximately $36 an hour with assistance from the District of Columbia’s Early Childhood Educator Compensation Program.
In 2021, after the D.C. Council approved tax increases for the city’s high-income residents, the District Payments to equity fundsan effort to increase compensation for early childhood educators and bring it more in line with compensation for K-12 teachers with similar qualifications and experience.
“It’s insane,” Bartle said. “That’s unprecedented.”
In the first year of the program, educators received a one-time payment of up to $14,000. Bartle remembers calling a friend, another early childhood educator, in disbelief about the state of her bank account. “We just sat there and cried,” she said. “It was a really great moment.”
Currently, the district collects wage subsidies through Bartol’s employer, which is reflected in her regular paycheck. This program is This led to improved recruitment and retention rates. On the ground — showing what’s possible when early childhood educators are paid a living wage.
“It really changed everything in my life,” Bartle said. This gave her and her partner of seven years the financial stability to get engaged and plan a small wedding next month. She said it was a “cultural milestone” but that she didn’t feel as secure as before.
It also made her feel valued for her work and career path.
“I used to say, ‘There’s no reason to get a master’s degree in early education because you’re never going to get that money back.’ But really, I love this field. I love learning. I love thinking deeply about the work I do,” said Bartle, who graduated this spring with a master’s degree in human development.
“It gave me the confidence to say, ‘This is serious work,'” she said. “You don’t need a degree to do a great job, but just making sure this is a serious job is enough. [with] Young children, there are complexities. ”
The sector is at a “crossroads,” the report authors wrote, as federal pandemic relief ends and a new presidential administration is set to take office in the coming months.
Bartol is aligned with the candidates this election cycle, she said. Candidates from both major parties have mentioned child care at numerous campaign events and even during the recent vice presidential debate.
Barsol points out that they don’t always get it right. she quoted the following recent interviews Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance says the solution to families’ huge childcare costs is to first rely more on “grandparents” to care for them, and if that option isn’t available, loosen regulations. and reduce eligibility to enter the workforce.
Vance said the problem with the field is that the barrier to entry is too high, and many people who want to work in early childhood education can’t get a degree, Barsol said.
“What are the barriers to entry? You don’t need a degree,” Bartle said. “The problem is that wages are very low and benefits are unpredictable.”
She said young people who enter the field eager to work with children realize “how tough it is physically, mentally and emotionally,” receive their first paycheck and say, “No, this is… I’ve seen people decide, “It’s not going to work for us.”
“The barrier to entry is not that high,” Bartle reiterated. “It means the system is not built to support young families and people caring for children.”
