The need for child care is putting pressure on families, the economy, and care centers themselves. According to recent research by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, families are forced to make tough decisions between paying hundreds of dollars a month for a child care center — which often means a substantial portion of a family’s monthly income — or leaving the workforce all together to be with their children full time.
Chuck Gascon, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, began researching the decline of child care while he and his wife struggled to find child care for their own children. His findings pointed to a cyclical effect between access to child care and the fluctuations in the labor market.
“Employment in the child care sector dropped by about 30%, during the pandemic … and while it has come back up, the overall employment is just not to pre-pandemic levels,” Gascon told St. Louis on the Air. “In the St. Louis area, the unemployment rate is under 3% [meaning] there are a lot of people back at work, looking for jobs and actively participating in the labor market. So the demand for care has also gone up even faster.”
Despite the critical need, child care providers are struggling to meet demand. Shona Lamond, executive director of Downtown Children’s Center, told St. Louis on the Air that many of her former employees are leaving the education and child care industry completely.
“Some of my best staff members have left Downtown Children's Center to pursue careers in the medical field. They're not leaving us to go work at other schools. They're leaving to either find a career that will ultimately pay better in the long run,” she said. “I feel like we've lost a lot of people to Uber and Amazon and other positions where they can make $18 to $20 an hour and it's an easy job. No stress.”
The issues don’t stop at low employment rates. Quality child care — care that prepares children to enter elementary school as well as social and emotional knowledge — is even more fraught.
“[Child development from] birth to five years is so crucial towards their ability to be a part of society,” Lamond said. “When families are forced to build these networks to take care of a child [without proper child care], and maybe grandma comes in for a few hours, or they're paying a teenager to watch their child … they're getting what they need physically, but they're really not developing the skill sets when they are walking into kindergarten at age 5.”
The needs of the labor force and child development may differ, but access to quality child care is a critical part of a healthy economy, urged Gascon.
“We want to do what's in the best interest for our kids. That's first and foremost,” said the Fed economist. “Employers are looking at it and saying, ‘We need people to show up to work.’ And we know that households are typically better off when their incomes are higher and they can work. That puts us in a really difficult situation where people are getting very creative to try to balance these two things out.”
So what can be done? Lamond thinks it will take federal and state intervention.
“The federal government has a law that provides free and public education to all children. It's mandatory [from kindergarten through 12th grade]. And I truly don't believe that until they consider the birth through 5 as part of that free and public education, and that it's funded federally, funded through the state [and] not on the backs of working parents, that there really is going to be sustainable long-term change.”
For more on the ways child care and the labor force go hand-in-hand and how these trends are changing family dynamics in homes listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcast by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Ulaa Kuziez is our production intern. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
