It's hard to go to work if you can't find anyone to take care of your child.
That's the case for more than half of Americans, making the "childcare desert" a hugely overlooked contributor to the labor shortage.
The Center for American Progress found in a 2018 analysis that 51% of Americans live in a childcare desert, where the number of children outnumber licensed care slots at least three to one. This often leads to parents — especially moms — working less or dropping out of the workforce completely to care for kids.
Democrats have a plan to increase wages in the sector and provide universal pre-K, but its passage into law is far from a sure thing.
"When parents can't find affordable, quality child care in their community, it's a nonstop financial and logistical burden for the whole family — and I hear about this so often from parents who are stressed and small business owners who've had their 'help wanted' signs up for way longer than they'd like," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a longtime affordable childcare proponent, said in a statement to Insider.
The problem has only grown during the pandemic as employment in child daycare services is still below pre-pandemic levels. While current childcare workers are considering career changes for better-paying jobs, providers are finding it tough to attract replacements, and some have closed permanently.
Fifty-one percent of the US live in a childcare desert, according to a 2018 Center for American Progress analysis. Some states have more people living in a childcare desert than others:
Rasheed Malik, associate director of research for early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, told Insider the worst care droughts are in low-income and rural areas, as well as places with high Hispanic or Latino populations.
Without care, parents have to cut back hours or leave the labor force
Malik said families sometimes turn to a neighbor or going to a childcare provider for just a few hours a week.
"For many families, they will patch together a variety of childcare arrangements, which is not ideal for kids who need [or] crave consistency," Malik said.
In the worst case, they may have to leave the labor force.
The Center for American Progress wrote in a pre-pandemic analysis that the labor force participation rate for moms with young children was three percentage points lower in childcare deserts than non-childcare deserts.
"When you extrapolate that out to a nation of millions and millions of women and mothers, this has very tangible effects on our overall economic productivity and the size of the labor force in general," Malik said.
Ultimately, it's "really quite a drag on our economy when people aren't able to freely join the labor force if they choose to," he said.
In Kentucky, which has emerged as the center of the labor shortage with its elevated quits rate, 50% of residents live in a childcare desert, per the 2018 analysis.
"The market is broken for childcare. The turnover is very high. The pay is very low. The subsidies are inadequate, and it's just not working now," Jason Bailey, the executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, told Insider.
Democrats are proposing big investments to help eradicate deserts
Right now, Democrats are still hammering out their social spending package, which has been nearly halved as moderates push back on the price tag. But in its latest iteration, the Build Back Better Act still includes investments in childcare including universal pre-K and increasing wages for childcare workers.
"Child care deserts are a huge problem everywhere, and especially in more rural parts of the country," Murray said. "That's why we're so focused on both dramatically lowering families' child care costs and making it easier for families to find quality child care in their own neighborhoods."
"This is just the kind of investment that we have argued for and called for years now," Malik said.
