At a YMCA in San Antonio, 200 children are on wait lists for child care because of hiring problems. It raised average hourly pay for full-time workers to $12.50 from $10, but still can’t recruit enough teachers to meet the demand.
Eight in 10 providers said they were experiencing a staffing problem, and half said hiring was harder than it had been before the pandemic, according to a survey over the summer of 7,500 of them by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Half said they were serving fewer children as a result of hiring problems, and a quarter had reduced their hours.
Yet child care centers have not responded the way some other industries have — by significantly raising wages and expanding benefits. That’s because of a math problem with the business model. “Those who provide child care aren’t paid well, and many who need it can’t afford it,” she said. The Biden plan would make preschool free starting at age 3, subsidize child care before then and raise the minimum wage for child care workers to $15 an hour.
She took home $18,000 last year after paying her bills and employees’ wages. This year — with lower attendance, an additional $4,500 spent on cleaning supplies and the $1,000 she spent on Indeed trying to hire — she expects to earn $14,000. Full-time tuition for a toddler is $756 a month, and she recently raised it about $4 a week. But she knows her clients, who mostly work at the local Whirlpool plant or fast-food restaurants, can’t pay more than that.
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