Summary
Child care costs for many U.S. families during peak inflation in 2022 ranged from $6,552 to $15,600 per child, comparable to rent, according to Labor Department data.
These high costs strained household budgets, disproportionately impacted women’s workforce participation, and fueled economic dissatisfaction among voters.
While Kamala Harris proposed policies to reduce child care costs, Donald Trump capitalized on broader economic grievances to expand his voter base, despite offering few specifics on addressing the issue.
Pandemic-era federal aid helped stabilize costs but left parents bearing much of the financial burden.
Aren’t staff at daycares way under paid? Where is all the money going?
Some of it is skimmed off, sure, but most of it is because it’s fucking expensive to employ people to just watch kids.
I just picked a state. Average infant daycare cost is $1172/mo. Maximum of 4 infants per caregiver, so a maximum of $4.688.
Health insurance here averages $400/mo, for an individual (some often paid by the employer).
Assuming they are employed, the employer is paying for federal unemployment insurance, workers compensation insurance, state unemployment insurance. It was really hard to get solid numbers but based on my reading, we can estimate about 2% will go to that.
So we have $4296 left over. Assuming payroll and supplies and everything else costs nothing at all (which is definitely not accurate), and assuming we give the rest straight to the employee… Their gross would be $51,000 roughly.
The average daycare worker in this state makes about $33k/year.
There’s tons and tons of federal and state funds for individual daycares, group centers etc. Some of it specifically to help boost payroll. Still doesn’t help because it gets eaten away by the bureaucracy.
I was thinking it would be 1 adult for every 8-10 kids but others are saying it is legally mandated to be 1 adult to 2-5 kids which means you are paying half a persons salary.
It depends on the age of the kids. Infants have fewer kids per adult than Pre-K does.
Yeah and not just pure take home. Also any benefits(though in this industry they’d be the worst of they’re even offered), making sure you have a correct staffing matrix, and taxes/unemployment insurance. It’s pretty cost prohibitive, depending on age. And once it’s not, the kid really can stay home alone.
The owners.
It’s not regulated and generally it’s hired as “low skill” (it really fucking isn’t) so they’re very replaceable.
The easiest money is made on old farts and new farts. Nursing homes care assistants are basically on minimum wage while the owners rake in the money.
It’s priced, what are you going to do? Not go to work and stay with your gran or child?
Really awesome that we as a society consider people watching our children at the most important part of their lives “low skill.”
Imagine what our test scores would be like if we considered them as important as hedge fund managers and marketing executives.
I am in the northeast and it is heavily regulated down to how many hours staff can be on duty and levels of staffing, the simple fact is that especially for those under twelve (where the rules are generally at least two people at all times for a group of ten, under three is literally 1 person per two children), ensuring that you have 10-12 hours of sufficient coverage (most ppl work 8-9 hours plus travel time to work) from background checked and fingerprinted persons while also feeding the children and keep a commercial building open is expensive.
I’m glad some places do it right!
Do public schools even have that ratio of adults to children?
Not in my neck of the woods, they are aiming for 25 kids per teacher eventually in NYC 🙄, and meanwhile some older NY folks say we baby the young cause they were upto 50 to a teacher when they went to school, like we shouldn’t try to progress.
Rent is a factor probably.
I’m pretty sure they are underpaid.