Oct 22, 2022 4 min read

If you’ve driven past a child care facility in recent weeks, it’s likely you’ve seen “Help Wanted” signs outside.

And it’s likely the same if you travel past a nursing home.

There’s a lot dividing Americans, but everyone should be able to agree that young children need quality care during the day when both parents work, and older or Americans with disabilities often need intensive or specialized care that family members can be hard-pressed to provide themselves. The problem right now is that there is a dearth of workers in child care, in residential care facilities and nursing homes. Throughout the country, there are waiting lists for home health aides for people who want to stay at home but need a hand with day-to-day tasks.

If you don’t have aging or infirm relatives or young children, you might be inclined to shrug and say, what the heck, it’s not my problem. The reality, however, is the lack of workers employed in what has been called the “care economy” ripples throughout the rest of the economy, and it’s stymying the ability of other sectors to find the workers they need.

As Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey put it earlier this year, “The bridge to work for many is someone who can come into their home and care for their aging parents. For others, it’s quality, affordable child care for their kids.”

Nursing homes and child-care centers shed jobs when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, and a portion of those employees have not come back even as the economy has roared back to life. Part of the problem is that the jobs tend not to pay well. For example, pay can hover around $13 an hour in Pennsylvania for child-care workers, according to the employment site Indeed, which is comparable to the national average. That’s almost exactly the same as the pay for a fast-food employee in the commonwealth. The lack of available employees and the need to maintain teacher-student ratios means spots in many day-care programs can be tough to come by, or involve months-long waiting lists. And when those coveted spots are available they can cost parents or guardians as much as $400 per children per week in this area. That’s almost the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Pittsburgh.

So, if workers – women, more often than not – can’t leave home because they can’t find a place to leave their children, or can’t find anyone to look after their elderly mother or father, then they’ll stay home. And if the cost of day care would eat up their entire paycheck and then some, it makes more sense to stay on the sidelines.

The original Build Back Better Plan announced by President Biden included additional support for the elder- and child-care sectors, but they were ultimately pared away as the bill shrank. Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell pointed out that “plans to build out the care economy inevitably get deprioritized.” She added, “‘Industrial policy’ is increasingly in vogue with both parties – but only for traditionally ‘manly’ industries, it seems. The past two years have seen big bipartisan bills appropriating federal funds for semiconductor manufacturing, electric-vehicle charging stations and other physical infrastructure – with the justification that Uncle Sam needs to make targeted industrial investments to help the rest of the economy grow.”

We should always try to see the world as it is, and as much as we might hope that the market can sort out the problems with the child-care and elder-care sectors, it’s becoming clear that idea could be wishful thinking. More needs to be done.