A new study by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley has revealed that daycare and preschool workers in every state are not earning enough money to stay out of poverty.
Poverty is defined by the federal government as an income threshold under which an individual cannot afford the cost of living while also maintaining a reasonable quality of life. The Berkeley study found that early childhood educators earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, which does not constitute a living wage for a single adult in any state.
Furthermore, while the study uses the living wage benchmark for a single adult, many child care workers have families and dependents of their own, so it’s reasonable to assume that those working in early childhood care who have dependents are living even farther below the poverty line than is reported by the study.
Daycare and preschool workers are disproportionately women of color, who already experience the largest wage gap compared with white and/or cisgender men. With COVID-era benefits like subsidies for child care expenses expiring in recent years, the vital support child care workers need to stay afloat has become much harder to come by.
The Berkeley report recommends several policies to improve child care institutions and working conditions for teachers, including:
- Increased funding from public sources, including state and local government revenue.
- Institute a wage floor in child care settings that will ensure child care workers are no longer earning below a living wage.
- Adopt new workplace standards ensuring paid time off, professional development opportunities, and mental health support for all child care institutions.
This new report is just one of many pointing to the unsustainable state of child care in the US. Low wages, staff shortages, and burnout are increasingly impacting child care centers and their employees — which in turn makes quality child care more difficult to access for all families.
