Child care sounds great — but where will it come from?

The Biden administration made news recently by compelling companies that want a piece of the semiconductor funding established by the CHIPS and Science Act to provide affordable child care to their workers.  It’s a noble and important policy lever that is rightly being pulled to strengthen the manufacturing workforce and attract women to work in an industry that desperately needs diversity — only 10 percent of semiconductor engineers are female.

The problem is, there are so few child care workers available that it’s unclear whether companies would be able to abide by the new provision at all. The number of child care facilities has rapidly declined since 2019. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 100,000 fewer child care workers now than before the pandemic. While the rest of the economy bounced back, and with record low unemployment, the child care industry went in the opposite direction, shrinking by almost 10 percent.  

The contraction is easy to understand. The average salary of a child care worker is just $27,000 a year — certainly not enough to keep workers in the industry. And child care facilities cannot raise rates on parents who are already struggling to deal with rising prices for basic necessities.

As a result, child care facilities are closing or can’t afford to open even where there is high demand. Vast swaths of the country are virtual child care deserts. According to the Center for American Progress, as much as 51 percent of Americans live in communities where the number of children to available licensed child care slots is more than 3 to 1. Exacerbating matters, in most states, preschool also is not available for 3- and 4-year-old children. Only 22 percent of all American 4-year-olds and 3 percent of 3-year-olds are in state-funded preschools. 

It’s not surprising, then, that as much as 40 percent of the female workforce with young children has either left their jobs or reduced their hours. Nor is it surprising that the U.S. is ranked 73rd in the world for female labor force participation.

Home economics for American families with children today has become a nightmarish catch-22.  Women who have left work to care for young children report higher levels of financial and emotional stress because most really can’t afford not to work. It’s a vicious cycle that will not be broken without legislative intervention. In fact, without a larger systemic investment, the Biden child care mandate in the CHIPS and Science Act, well-intentioned though it is, will be impossible to fulfill.

For decades, the U.S. has resisted child care investments while the rest of the world has surged ahead. Most Western nations that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) acted decades ago so that women could enter and stay in the workforce.  They invested heavily in government-backed child care infrastructure required to make the economics work. Most of Europe invests heavily on a per-child basis. The OECD average spend per child is more than $14,400 a year compared to the U.S., which sits at the bottom of the rankings at just $500 per child. 

A new, bipartisan Senate bill introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) would help address this crisis. The Child Care Workforce and Facilities Act would provide grants for states to train child care workers and build or renovate child care facilities. There is a companion bill in the House.

But bills such as these have been introduced before with little chance of passage. Only a heavy push by the White House and a national conversation about the urgency of the issue will make it possible. If President Biden is serious about this — and he must be — it’s time that he leans in to get this done.

Biden lost an opportunity to address this in the Build Back Better plan and in the infrastructure bill. Advocates lobbied intensively, arguing that child care is infrastructure but, like paid leave, which has languished in Congress for decades, child care did not make the cut.

Now is the time to rectify this by pushing child care as the critical economic issue it is and challenging Republicans to justify their opposition. Just as he did on Social Security, Biden has a chance to call child care opponents’ bluff. He should challenge them to explain how they square opposition to abortion and the child care support that families need. Even in a closely divided Congress, child care is a political winner. A majority of Americans support government funded child care and pre-K. It’s the kind of issue everyone understands and relates to.  It’s a win-win — for women, for children, for manufacturing, and for America.

When it comes to American families and children, it’s long past the time that America competes with the rest of the world by investing in the child care infrastructure we need to be globally competitive. Our children, the entire economy, and American women are waiting for it.

Lauren Leader is co-founder and CEO of All In Together, a non-profit women’s civic education organization. She tweets at @LaurenLeaderAIT.