San Diego County Creates Grant Program For Day Care Providers Hurt By Pandemic

Speaker 1: 00:00 A quarter of the women who have lost a job during this pandemic sets because of a lack of childcare. And for those who are still working at home, the pressure of balancing care for small children with managing work responsibilities is crushing Alicia, Sasser, motor Stino studies, gender and labor market issues at the school of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern university. She surveyed over 2000 parents nationwide and may and June, and says the crisis in childcare could affect women in the workforce for decades to come. Alicia, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Now, you yourself are a mother. Tell us first about your experience of balancing work and childcare. During this pandemic, Speaker 2: 00:40 I have four children, the youngest of which is an eight year old, who just finished second grade. So she's a rising third grader. And when the pandemic first hit and school's closed for three weeks here in Massachusetts, you know, we, my husband and I juggled between us working from home and keeping her engaged, and then school's closed for the rest of the year. And we put in some more structure around that and we went with the remote learning and then over the summer, we've just been stitching together childcare, but all to say that with each extension of the lack of childcare or the remote learning that's happening with schools, it's just getting harder and harder for working parents to sustain these childcare arrangements that worked okay for three weeks or three months. But now looking at it for an entire academic year would be really difficult to pull off. Speaker 1: 01:30 So you did this survey of a couple of thousand parents around the country. What was the main thing that you found that struck you? Speaker 2: 01:38 Yeah, so along with two other colleagues at Northeastern university, when we did our survey, we set out to find out what working parents were struggling with and learn more about the kinds of strategies that they had been engaging in. And we were surprised just by the magnitude of the problem. So we found that 13% of working parents reported that they either had lost a job or reduce their hours solely because of childcare. And we were really surprised that it was more than one in 10 working parents. And then we also asked them all about their time that they spend during the week and how much they're spending on work during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic. And we found that on average working parents are losing eight hours a week or one full working day because they need to juggle childcare along with their work responsibilities. Speaker 1: 02:23 Who did you find in your survey was feeling the worst brunt of all this? Speaker 2: 02:27 Yeah, so certainly more vulnerable populations. So we found that the hours loss were greater for women of color women without a college degree women in lower income households. And a lot of that stems from holding an in person job or an essential job where you actually can't be working from home like myself and my colleagues who are professors. And we've been able to conduct our research, uh, working from home. But if you have to be there in person, then there really becomes the point. The rubber meets the road and you have to choose between either childcare or being at work. And that seems to be where this is falling most disproportionately on those populations. Speaker 1: 03:09 And you say that this is likely to affect parents, primarily women in the longterm. How so? Speaker 2: 03:15 Sure. So our survey also revealed when we looked into the job loss piece of this, that among our sample, those who had become unemployed during the pandemic, we found that 25% of the women who reported becoming unemployed during the pandemic said it was solely due to a lack of childcare compared to only half, as many men reporting that they had lost a job to childcare. And so as with other points in time, when a family loses childcare, or they have to choose between expensive childcare and going to work, usually this burden falls disproportionately on women. And so we're seeing that really on steroids now during the pandemic where women are really bearing the brunt of this. And I think, you know, it's one thing perhaps to pull back from the labor force for a few weeks or a few months, but now we're looking at an entire year of hybrid learning or remote learning in schools. We're going to find probably that more women are going to be dropping out over the next, you know, nine to 12 months as we continue in this pandemic. And that has really longterm implications for their ability to get back into the labor force for their earnings potential to be able to stay on track in their careers. Speaker 1: 04:26 No, since your column came out, California has allowed daycare providers more flexibility in class sizes and staffing requirements. Do you think that'll stop this onslaught of daycare closures that you predict in California at least? Yeah, Speaker 2: 04:39 No, I think it's helpful. I think the more that we learn about the virus and the science of it and the transmission among younger children that we need to act on that. And then the question becomes, which of these preventive measures are the most important? Is it the limitation on the number of children in a particular space and the social distancing, or is it the practice of wearing masks or is it hand or what combination of these gets us to the safest environment in the least costly way. And so, as we are able to learn more and loosen some of these restrictions, we'll be able to have more childcare slots open up, but that's a pretty rare thing for right now. And also we haven't had much funding support for the childcare industry, which has really been devastated in terms of their ability to have the same class sizes and enrollment that they did before be able to take in the same revenues. And at the same time, having additional costs put on them with additional cleaning, with additional staffing, uh, with additional toys that need to be purchased. So there's no sharing. So I think that it's a move in the right direction, but I worry it's too little too late, that there's already very, very high number of daycare providers that are already heading towards bankruptcy or have already gone out of business, Speaker 1: 05:51 Say too little too late has been done. What else needs to be done in your opinion? Speaker 2: 05:55 So the first thing that needs to happen is in this package that Congress is considering there needs to be a bailout for the childcare industry. The childcare industry got $3.5 million in March, which was less than $2,000 per daycare center in the United States. What we really need to do is support the industry. And that would mean an investment of about $50 million. According to a letter of support that was circulated among economists we're over a hundred economists signed on, um, that Congress needs to be doing something to support the industry, but we also need to make sure that we support working parents. And so we need to get dollars to working parents as soon as possible for them to be able to put together, um, even informal care arrangements, especially as the school year starting. So with more of the move to hybrid school openings for remote learning, this is time that families had not budgeted for daycare. Speaker 2: 06:50 This was time that was covered by public schools. And so there's a lot of families out there right now who are reforming schooling, pods, and other ways to be able to have their kids supervised during the day during this remote learning time, uh, which are works out well for middle class and upper middle class families, but for low income families who had not budgeted for this and don't have as many resources, we need to expand some kind of childcare support to those families, to be able to pay for someone, to supervise their kids so that they can get to work. Thank you so much for being with us. You're welcome. We've been speaking with Alicia, Sasser, modus, Dino who studies gender and labor market issues at the school of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern university.