Child care is about to get even more expensive as pandemic funds end
Child care is about to get even more expensive as pandemic funds end
The federal government has provided more than $24 billion to child care providers around the country over the last two years to help them through the worst of the pandemic, but that funding expires in September.
To be clear: Child care in this country isn’t really working for anyone.
“Parents have to pay too-high prices, early educators are making poverty-level wages,” said Julie Kashen at The Century Foundation.
That was true long before the pandemic, she noted, but the pandemic made it worse.
Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has commented on it.
“Secretary Yellen has said it is a broken market, a failed market,” Kashen said. “This is something that the government needs to have a role in.”
For the last few years, the government has taken a bigger role. The billions in pandemic relief have kept many centers open, according to Sarah Rittling at the nonprofit First Five Years Fund.
“That money’s been able to go to pay teachers more,” she said. That has been especially important because Rittling said that child care doesn’t pay — the average wage is around $13 an hour.
“We know and we’ve seen teachers have left the industry because pay has been better elsewhere,” she said.
Federal funding has helped child care providers compete for workers. It’s also helped them pay their rent, mortgage or utilities and buy supplies to make their spaces more COVID-safe.
Without it, “I think we would have potentially seen a decimation of the system that we have in place today,” said Stephanie Schmit at the nonprofit Center for Law and Social Policy.
And she’s concerned about what will happen in the coming year after the pandemic funding runs out. “We’re likely to see a lack of availability of child care. We’ll likely see increases in prices, especially in the current economy.”
The cost of child care is already increasing almost twice as fast as overall inflation. And a recent survey from the nonprofit National Association for the Education of Young Children found that about 40% of providers said they’ll have to raise tuition when pandemic funding ends.
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