When fewer parents can afford to stay home from work, the lack of affordable, quality child care is a serious problem. Families face high costs for even the simplest child care services, let alone programs with good developmental educational components.
Meanwhile, child care workers struggle to stay in an industry with low wages. Median child care worker wages in the United States are $7.90 an hour, compared with the U.S. all-occupation median wage of $13.53 per hour, according to a May 2003 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Further, there are limited opportunities for advancement. According to the Keystone Research Center, “The share of workers in the Child Day Care Services industry with a college degree or more has fallen by a third since 1983.…This decline has taken place during a period when the share of all workers with a college degree rose by a third.”
Quality child care requires more than good teachers, good programs and committed parents. Quality child care depends upon an investment of additional financial resources.
