Second in a series
By DEBORAH E. LANS
GHENT–The workforce shortage is a topic of daily conversation in the county. Businesses, restaurants, healthcare facilities — all are desperate to find workers. One often-overlooked cause is the inability of parents to find care for their pre-school aged children.
A 2021 study found that more than half of all New York children under age 6 lived in households where all available adults were in the labor force, thus compelling parents to find childcare or else leave the workforce. The same study, by the state’s Department of Labor (DOL), found that the licensed childcare capacity statewide meets only half of the need.
Locally, the situation is “dire,” according to Hudson-based Child Care Connection’s Aisha Hosier. The lack of childcare has “real impacts on everyday families. Parents end up working opposite shifts due to the need to care for their children, never seeing each other, or parents (mainly mothers) leave the workforce to care for children, with the loss of income putting the family under a huge financial burden.”
The numbers bear this out. The DOL found that statewide 91,800 people (86% of them women) worked part-time because of child care issues. Others must work freelance or from home to address the issue.
Three parents interviewed at Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood’s two-hour program for infants and toddlers all told the same stories about their inability to find full-time care: they either left work full-time (one as a nurse, the other as a social worker) or reduced their work hours (another nurse) in order to provide care for their children, and were thankful for even GHPN’s part-time program to provide socialization and structure around learning ABC’s for their children.
Pattern for Progress’s recent report, Childcare in the Hudson Valley, found that business owners in the mid-Hudson Valley cited childcare as “the No. 1 support service they need but are unable to provide.” Childcare trumped transportation, education, tuition assistance, debt repayment and mental health support as a priority.
Pattern concluded that “an ample quantity of affordable childcare is necessary for any region, including the Hudson Valley, to support a productive workforce.”
The lack of an adequate childcare system is enormously costly. A 2023 study by Ready Nation and the Council for a Strong America concluded that the nation suffers $122 billion in lost earnings, productivity and government revenue (taxes on earnings) every year as a result of the unavailability of affordable infant and toddler care. For New York State that figure is just shy of $10 billion every year.
The losses include wages that cannot be earned because workers must stay home full or part-time to care for their pre-school children; productivity losses, as parents are late or miss all or part of work days to care for children with illnesses or to address other child care issues; and the tax revenues that would be earned on the income those parents would generate, if they could work.
The Ready Nation study also found that the negative impacts of insufficient childcare have increased since 2018, with parents reporting that “the infant-toddler child care crisis had caused them to be fired or have pay or hours reduced three times more often in 2022 than in 2018.” Moreover, nationwide, the rate of parents quitting a job due to child care problems doubled in the past five years.
The workforce issues do not affect all industries equally. A 2023 report by the Boston Consulting Group noted that the two fastest-growing industries, health care and educational services, predominantly employ women and have the highest share of employees seeking childcare. Both industries are also suffering worker shortages.
The damage caused by the unavailability of care is felt more heavily by women, who are most often the parents who drop out of the workforce in whole or part to care for their children, who therefore see their lifetime earnings diminish and who cannot achieve the full advancement their talents might merit. In other words, childcare is an equity issue. As childcare scholar Sonya Michel put it: in societies where there is universal free or affordable childcare available, that fact tends to “neutralize the discriminatory effect of motherhood.”
Finally, the lack of available care impacts the future workforce. After all, if children do not reach their full capacity in their early years when most brain development occurs, or if they arrive at school unready to learn or lacking socialization, the follow-on effects are lasting.
Kathy Mabb recently retired after four decades working with young children and their parents, most recently three and four year-olds at Columbia Opportunities, a county-wide social services agency. Ms. Mabb summed up the situation like this: “It is important for parents to be able to go to work, secure in the knowledge that their child is well cared for, or else their work will suffer. Studies show that for every $1 spent on childcare, there is a $1.80 return in economic productivity. Well-cared for infants and toddlers go to school as capable learners, because quality early childcare has a lasting impact on a child’s ability to succeed. The reverse is also true — without quality early care, children may never catch up. Yet, the powers that be still haven’t caught on. I have been doing this for 40 years. Why are we still talking about the same things?”
The next article in this series will look at some of the reasons that childcare capacity continues to decline.
