#ChildCare #Child-CareWorkers #ChildCareInDemand
They are using non-compete clauses, college tuition incentives and non-refundable wait-list fees.
Are these engineers or scientists? No, child-care workers.
There is a child-care workforce crisis – at least in Seattle, where Sally Ho based her article for the Associated Press. The article was also printed in the Sept. 9, 2018, edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The situation basically goes like this: the booming economy is encouraging child-care workers to leave their highly demanding, low-paying jobs for other positions.
And, at least in Seattle, the demand for child-care programs is booming, the article says.
What are the child-care providers doing? They are requiring and enforcing non-compete clauses for their workers. To raise money to increase salaries, they are requiring families to pay fees to get on a wait list, the article says.
Child-care workers in the U.S. make less than parking-lot attendants and dog walkers, the article quotes Marcy Whitebook, co-director of the University of California, Berkeley’s, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.
“If you can’t get workers to do the job, then it’s hard to expand the supply. And when the economy is good, that’s when you need to expand the supply,” the article quotes Whitebook.
In 2017, there were 132,000 more children up to age 6 in Washington state who could use formal child-care arrangements, compared to the number of available child-care slots, the article quotes
Child Care Aware, and advocacy group.
Two-thirds of all children up to age 6 have parents who are both working. Some child-care centers are so popular in Seattle, New York and San Francisco that parents pay to get on waiting lists while still trying to conceive, the article quotes Whitebook.
Research show children who attend good preschools are better off as adults, with higher incomes and healthier lifestyles, the article says.
The obvious answer here is to make child-care work more desirable by increasing workers’ pay. But there’s a delicate economic reality: there’s only so much most parents will pay for child care. If the cost of child care is the same, or exceeds, one of the parent’s salaries, it makes no sense for that parent to work – at least economically.
When looking deeper, the solution for parents is for at least one parent to have more time flexibility, while still earning money. Time flexibility, plus money, equals choices for parents. If they WANT to send their child to a day-care facility or preschool, they can. If they want to keep them home until kindergarten, they can.
There are many vehicles out there that parents can utilize to build more time into the family, while still earning a potentially greater income than many W-2 jobs pay. To check out one of the best such vehicles, message me.
Meanwhile, if you are a child-care worker, particularly in an expensive urban area, and you like your job, know that you are in demand. Don’t hesitate to ask for a raise, if you believe you are not getting paid enough for what you do. Or, you, too, could use your non-working hours to supplement your income in a different way.
If you are parents, or parents-to-be, you may have to think outside the box to figure out how you are going to manage raising children with work. It may entail a whole new form of thinking on how the family can create time flexibility, with enough income to give that child (or children) the life they deserve.
If you now get paid only for time worked, imagine what you can do if you got paid by leveraging your time to give more of it to your family.
Peter