Many parents are having to put in extra hours at work as inflation continues to take a toll on everyday expenses — including daycare. Recent reports from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that childcare expenses are untenable for many families throughout the country — and some families are spending as much as 19% of their income on it.
Wendy Chun-Hoon, the director of the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor, tells KMOX that in St. Louis, parents are paying more than 21% of a median family’s income for infant care. “The bottom line is we're paying too much,” she said.
Some theorize that childcare could be related to the excess of job openings across industries right now — some have to decide between going back to work and paying someone to watch their kids. Chun-Hoon said it could definitely be a factor.
“During the first year of the pandemic, 1.5 million moms with kids under the age of 13 left the workforce. So that was a really unique moment when schools closed, obviously, for in person learning,” she said. “And a lot of childcare providers also had to close their doors. And those numbers have increased and, improved, gotten a little bit better. But we're not back to full employment yet for women, and certainly for parents, mothers.”
Another angle, she said, is that employment is still down 7.5% from where it was at the beginning of the pandemic, and many of those jobs were held by women who want to come back.
“So it is both a price that families are paying, and the cost of childcare, but really also about women's employment across the country,” she said.
Chun-Hoon said the only way to get childcare to be accessible for all families is with a “significant federal investment” that could help lower costs across the country. The United States contributes a significantly smaller amount of money to childcare — one estimate says that richer nations contribute $14,000 a year for a toddler’s care, while in the U.S., that number drops to just $500.
“I think when you look on average, the United States is not investing as much as it could or should by comparison,” Chun-Hoon said.
Hear more about the rising costs of childcare in the U.S. from Total Information AM:
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