When It Takes a Village but the Village is Strained: The Growing Child Care Crisis
It is one of the most difficult things a new parent or caretaker does — dropping off their child at day care for the first time. Exhaustion, exhilaration, pride, worry, and various other emotions are wrapped up into taking care of a child and that first drop off produces many emotions and anxiety.
But it’s not simply the emotional roller coaster ride a parent or caretake face; gaining access to a high quality, affordable child care program is a real challenge, a challenge made even more insurmountable because of a once in a generation pandemic. Many parents are facing serious balancing acts, struggling with changing work environments or careers because of the pandemic — from working at home to going back to the office and rapidly changing situations in between.
Child care is an essential component of any post-pandemic economic recovery, but according to a recent U.S. Department of Treasury report, “The child care sector is a crucial and underfunded part of the American economy.” That underfunding comes with consequences. Many parents or caretakers face the dilemma of trying to balance their work and their family, and the lack of child care can tip families over — resulting in lost wages or even one’s job.
Child Care Challenges in New York
New York’s child care network is a patchwork of a number of different types of providers and programs, including center-based day care for infants and toddlers, private residential family programs, and school-age programs outside of normal school hours (e.g. after school programs).
According to data provided by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) — the primary regulator of child care in New York — there are 17,161 licensed or registered child care providers with more than 776,021 slots statewide.* The pie chart below shows the number of slots by the various types of programs. Programs offered in various centers or facilities are the main source of child care in New York, with residence/family-based programs making up roughly 18% of the total number of slots.**
While the Number of Child Care Slots are Up Since 2015, New York Has Lost 14% of its Child Care Providers
Analyzing available OCFS data from 2015 to 2021 found that child care capacity (i.e. the number of slots) have grown 3%, yet the number of providers has decreased 14%. Since 2015, New York State has lost 2,840 child care providers, but gained 19,046 in capacity or slots.
In other words, there may be more slots available in New York since 2015, but a shrinking number of locations for parents to chose from — potentially increasing the number of child care deserts (i.e. areas of the state with no child care option). Click on the link below for a great interactive map showing child care deserts from the Center for American Progress. As the Center for American Progress map illustrates, there are already many child care deserts in every region of New York.
Infant and Toddler Programs Have Lagged Behind School-Age Programs
Prior to the pandemic the marginal growth of child care capacity was from programs for school-age children. This is likely attributable to the significant expansion of the state’s community school and after school programs at the time. School-age child care capacity grew nearly 11% from 2015 to 2021. For non-school age children, i.e. infants and toddlers, capacity at center-based programs grew much slower by 4%. Likewise, while the number of school-age child care providers increased 1.6% from 2015 to 2021, the number of providers for infant and toddlers decreased 4.1%.
During the Pandemic the Number of Providers and Slots Decreased: New York Lost 1,351 Providers and 14,882 Slots
The pandemic disrupted the child care network even further. If you take a closer look at the OCFS data, there was an accelerated decrease in the number of providers and the number of available slots over the past two years. At the beginning of the pandemic New York was put “on pause” and many businesses, including child care facilities most likely never reopened. But even after the initial peak in 2020, the number of child care facilities and capacity continued to decline in 2021, so it wasn’t simply a result of the initial on pause. From just before the pandemic in 2019 through 2021, New York lost 1,351 providers and 14,882 slots (capacity). That is a loss of more than 7% of the state’s providers and a loss of nearly 2% of total slots.
In other words, since 2015 the greatest decrease in the state’s day care providers (nearly half of the decrease) came during the two pandemic years. In addition, COVID reversed and erased the annual growth in slots.
Center-Based Programs are Growing, While Family-Run Residential Programs are Shrinking
Another change over this period has been the reduction of residential home-based child care programs. From 2015 to 2021, small family-run programs (maximum of eight children) were cut by nearly half and group family programs (maximum of 16 children) dropped two percentage points.
We Must Strengthen the Child Care System: It Does Take a Village but the Village Needs Resources
Hopefully disruptions in child care programs from closures because of outbreaks, changing pandemic rules, and changing work rules begin to wane. Families are at their breaking point. Many parents reading this have experienced taking their children to day care only to find their facility closed because of a COVID outbreak, resulting in a disrupted work day.
But as we’re hopefully coming out of the worst of the pandemic, it begs the question: Does the light on the horizon mean better days ahead for child care? Data suggest that even beyond COVID there will continue to be problems unless they are addressed head on. COVID greatly impacted child care but it did not cause the system’s problems. If anything, the pandemic exposed the widening cracks in the child care system’s foundation.
Cost is a Barrier to Child Care
For those parents who do have child care programs in their community, cost constraints are prohibitive in many cases. According to an interactive cost tool created by the Center for American Progress, the average monthly center-based infant program in New York is $1,872, the average monthly center-based toddler program is $1,471, and home-based program is $1,368 — all exceeding the national average.
For center-based infant programs that’s more than $22,000 for the year, which is out of reach for many families. To put that into some context, it is about 33% of the median annual income in New York State — or the cost of child care accounts for one-third of the median annual salary.*** New York does have a number of programs to assist families with cost, but often it is not enough as a recent report by the New York State Child Care Availability Task Force found. The task force found this was especially true for families with infants or toddlers.
There are Workforce Challenges Facing Child Care
Part of the disruption in child care is because of workforce shortages. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual salary for child care workers in New York State is $31,500, which is better than the national average of $26,790.**** Yet, with an approximate median hourly wage of $14.40, coupled with the disruption and liabilities associated with managing the pandemic may be a reason it has been difficult to recruit more people into the sector.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment in the child care sector dropped from 53,290 in the May of 2019 to 49,160 in the May of 2020 — a loss of 4,130 child care workers or nearly an 8% reduction. That is a cause for concern.
Whether this is temporary as a result of the pandemic is unclear, though there are signs to suggest an ongoing shortage in the field. From my recent experience at the State University of New York found that even where we made capital investment to build child care space, programs could not get off the ground because of the lack of workforce. To address the problem we expanded paid internships in child care programs for our early childhood students in order to alleviate some of the immediate shortages (as well as provide critically-important hands on experience for our students). But a broader policy approach must also be taken given the tight economic margins many programs operate within. In the end, it will take more governmental assistance to reverse the downward workforce trend.
New York’s Economic Future Must Include the Expansion of High Quality Child Care Options
This is a snapshot of a extraordinary challenge facing society. Given the expanded investment in community schools, pre-k, and after school programing in New York over the past several years could serve as a roadmap for other child care programs, especially for infants and toddlers. The billions in pandemic relief provided to states by the federal government is an important investment to strengthen child care. New York has been getting the federal child care money out the door and we must keep the momentum going with a sustained response — even after the federal pandemic relief money runs dry. It’s a moral and economic imperative. It is important for families, for businesses, and the economy. Without doing more to improve access to high quality, affordable child care will only slow our economic growth and continue to perpetuate growing economic inequality.
*I was able to pull OCFS data called Child Care Facts and Figures from 2015–2021.
**“Center-Based Day Care” are facility-based programs for non-school-age children and “School-Age” are center-based programs for school-age children (e.g. after school); “Small Residential Family” are private residential programs with no more than two non relatives and eight children total and “Group Resident Family” is private residential with no more than two non relatives and 16 children total.
***According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median salary in New York State is $68,486.
****This excludes preschool teachers and teaching assistants in preschool, elementary, middle, and secondary schools.
