Despite historic funds funneled into the field in the wake of the pandemic, early care and education remains one of the most embattled occupations in the United States.
Early childhood educators earn, on average, $13.07 per hour, a wage that places them in the bottom 3 percent of workers nationally. (Elementary and secondary school teachers, by comparison, earn an average of $31.80 per hour, and American workers, across all occupations, earn about $23 per hour.)
This is according to the findings of the Early Childhood Labor Force Index 2024a report typically published every two years and produced 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. child care and education system was broken long before the pandemic, thanks to a dynamic in which families can't afford to pay more while providers can't afford to charge less. Those costs, in fact, are subsidized by the paltry salaries earned by early childhood educators — the teachers and staff of these programs, about 98 percent of whom are women and half of whom are women of color ), even though they are entrusted with one of the functions. the most important jobs out there, said Caitlin McLean, lead author of the report and director of multistate programs at CSCCE.
“Our child care staff, most of whom have some level of higher education, are developing our children's brains in the most critical period of their development,” McLean said during a news conference last week. “(Yet) early childhood educators are paid so little that many worry where their next meal will come from.”
In early care and education programs, employer-sponsored benefits, such as health insurance and retirement plans, are rare. Nearly half (43 percent) of early childhood educators rely on public assistance, such as Medicaid and food stamps, to make ends meet, which the report says costs taxpayers $4.7 billion annually. anus.
The billions of federal dollars pumped into this field in recent years, including $39 billion of the American Rescue Plan Act, are widely considered to have been successful in helping to stabilize programs and avoid massive waves of closures. However, most of those dollars expired in September 2023, while the rest expired about two weeks ago.
In the absence of continued funding and a more permanent solution for this field, ARPA dollars do not appear to have moved the needle in any meaningful way. New Labor Force Index data underscores that reality.
“The funding was not about creating the ideal child care system,” McLean said. “It was about avoiding the total collapse of the system we had.”
Corrine Hendrickson's situation illustrates why funding has failed to transform the field and the lives of those who work in it.
ARPA's direct provider payments allowed Hendrickson to make changes to its licensed home child care program in rural Wisconsin and spend money it never had. He hired an employee for the first time, allowing him to step away for personal appointments. Made repairs and improvements to the building. She increased her own salary from $8 an hour to $12, which she said gave her enough extra money to buy clothes for her own children and pay monthly bills on time.
“Without ARPA funding, I would have closed and never reopened,” she said, adding that as a home-based provider, “if I had closed, I would have lost my house.”
But last year ARPA's funding expired and it was forced to make difficult decisions just to maintain its new $12 hourly rate. She has raised tuition rates for families three times in the past year, she shared, for a total increase of $70 per week. Some families, he added, have reached out to ask about his program, but then backed out when they learned that he charges between $259 and $281 a week, depending on the age of the child. It's too expensive, they tell him.
“Right now, it doesn't seem like a sustainable career,” Hendrickson said, “and it really isn't.”
Nationally, salaries for early childhood educators have increased 4.6 percent in recent years, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Index. That's still less than the overall workforce, whose wages have increased by an average of 4.9 percent, as well as those of fast food workers (5.2 percent) and retail workers (6.8 percent). hundred). The last two occupations are relevant because many educators have left their positions in recent years for jobs in food and retail, where salaries are similar or higher and the stress is much lower.
However, the national average is just an average. About a dozen states have stepped in with their own investments in education and child care since ARPA dollars expired, helping programs and staff avoid the so-called “child care cliff” that others have endured.
Some states have seen much larger pay increases for early childhood educators; In nine states, plus Washington, DC, early childhood educators experienced pay increases of more than 10 percent. The biggest gains came in D.C., with an average pay increase of 27.1 percent for educators.
'This is serious work'
Lida Barthol is an infant and toddler teacher in Washington, DC, where her salary has skyrocketed in recent years.
Barthol entered the field in 2016, when he earned about $11 an hour. She is now a lead teacher with a bachelor's degree, and with the help of the District of Columbia's early childhood educator-specific compensation program, she earns the equivalent of about $36 an hour.
In 2021, after the D.C. Council approved a tax increase for the city's highest-income residents, the District launched the Pay Equity Fundan effort to increase the compensation of early childhood educators to better align with that of K-12 teachers with similar qualifications and experience.
“Which is crazy,” Barthol said. “It's unheard of.”
In the first year of the program, educators received one-time payments of up to $14,000. Barthol remembers calling her friend, another early childhood educator, in disbelief at the state of her bank account. “We just sat there and cried,” he said. “It was a really important moment.”
Now, the District channels Barthol's salary supplement through his employer, so it is reflected in his regular paychecks. The program, which has led to increased recruitment and retention on the ground—shows what is possible if early childhood educators are paid a living wage.
“It really changed everything in my life,” Barthol said. It gave her and her partner of seven years the financial security to get engaged and plan a small wedding, which will take place next month. It's a “cultural milestone,” he said, that he didn't feel stable enough to have before.
It has also made him feel that his work (his professional career) is valued.
“I used to say, 'There's no reason to get a master's degree in early education because you'll never get that money back.' But I really love this field. I love learning. I love thinking deeply about the work I'm doing,” said Barthol, who graduated in the spring with her master's degree in human development.
“It gave me the confidence to say, 'This is serious work,'” he said. “You don't need a degree to do amazing work, but it's just that statement that this is serious work, and (with) young children, there's complexity there.”
Now that federal pandemic relief is gone and a new presidential administration will begin in a few months, the field finds itself at a “crossroads,” the report's authors wrote.
Barthol has been on the same page with the candidates this election cycle, he said. Candidates from both major parties have mentioned child care at various campaign events and even during the recent vice presidential debate.
They don't always get it right, Barthol noted. She cited a x.com/Acyn/status/1831500812897677597″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>recent interview with Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who argued that the solution to the sky-high costs of child care for families was, first, to rely more on “grandma and grandpa” for care, and then whether that option is not available, reduce regulations and lower qualifications to enter the workforce.
Vance suggested that the problem with this field is that the barrier to entry is too high, Barthol said, and that many people want to work in early childhood education but can't get a degree.
“What barrier to entry? You don’t need a degree,” Barthol said. “The problem is the wages are so low and the benefits are unpredictable.”
He has seen many young people enter the field, excited to work with children, only to realize how “physically, mentally and emotionally demanding it is,” then receive that first paycheck and decide, no, this is not going to work for them. .
“It's not that the barrier to entry is that high,” Barthol reiterated. “It's just that the system is not designed to support young families and people who care for their children.”
