The lack of childcare is a meaningful and real constraint for parental workforce participation:
“There were about 58,000 fewer daycare workers in the U.S. last month compared with February 2020.”
If, on average, the teacher-to-child ratio is 1:4, that means childcare for almost 250,000 children doesn’t exist, no matter how much you paid for it. Assuming one parent needs to stay home and not work, that’s 250,000 fewer employees in the marketplace.
Challenge–childcare providers can’t compete for talent on either the money OR flexibility workers want. They can’t raise their rates because parents can’t pay more and the teachers need to be onsite to do their jobs within certain hours.
Unfortunately, Federal support for childcare was not passed. And now we are seeing the real ramifications.
Childcare is infrastructure. And that doesn’t include eldercare which is equally as unreliable and unavailable in many cases.