A looming childcare cliff could cost families $9 billion in earnings and leave millions of kids without care. Democratic lawmakers want to avoid a crisis. – Insider
By Juliana KaplanChildcare could become more expensive and even harder to find in a few weeks, but some Democratic lawmakers are trying to avert that looming cliff.
The childcare industry is currently being propped up by a $24 billion investment from President Joe Biden's 2021 American Rescue Plan. Come September 30, though, that funding will run out — with potentially devastating economic results for children, caretakers, and parents…
Parents are already coming up against unsustainably high costs: The Department of Labor has found that families across the country pay between 8% and 19% of their median family income per child on care. That means childcare is already unaffordable almost everywhere in the country. At the same time, childcare workers are facing low pay and tough conditions; they have previously told Insider that the industry needs even more subsidizing.
Paige Connell, a Massachusetts-based 33-year-old mother of four, pays about $5,000 a month for childcare. That's more than her mortgage.
"It is the thing that we pay the most money for," she previously told Insider. She's not alone: Other parents have told Insider that high costs for scarce childcare have led them to drop out of the workforce completely.