47
the industry will also have a ripple effect
on parents, who depend on day-care cen-
ters to work outside the home. Without
access to affordable and convenient child-
care, many parents—and the burden falls
disproportionately on mothers—will be
forced to quit their jobs. It’s no longer a
question of whether this will happen, but
how pervasive it will be. From August to
September, 865,000 women dropped out
of the labor force, according to the latest
jobs report; 216,000 men did too. This
mass exodus is already hindering wom-
en’s advancement, exacerbating gender
income inequality and putting a drag on
the U.S. economic recovery. “If we had a
panic button, we’d be hitting it,” says Ra-
chel Thomas, the CEO of Lean In. “We
have never seen numbers like these.”
Mass closures of day-care centers
may also warp the childcare industry in
the long term, experts say. Newly unem-
ployed caretakers, who tend to make low
wages in demanding settings, may never
return to their profession, and childcare-
center owners may choose to abandon
their businesses for more lucrative ones.
Families, meanwhile, may opt to keep a
parent home to watch the kids. “Absent
our collective investment in childcare,
there really won’t be an effective com-
munity recovery,” warns Lynette Fraga,
the CEO of Child Care Aware, an industry
research and advocacy organization. “If
we aren’t supporting childcare providers,
there won’t be childcare to go back to.”Millions of AMericAn pArents,
who already spend an average of about
$10,000 per toddler per year for child-
care, may wonder why their day-care
center is in such dire financial straits.
The answer, in part, is simple econom-
ics: operating a day care requires a lot
of overhead—rent, utilities, staff salaries
and equipment—while profit margins are
relatively slim. COVID-19 has made those
ratios even worse. “This was an industry
that was really struggling before the pan-
demic,” says Simon Workman, the direc-
tor of early-childhood policy at the Cen-
ter for American Progress (CAP). “If you
were struggling to get by before, then the
chance of you closing now is pretty high.”
Lauren Brown, the director of World
of Wonders Childcare and Learning Cen-
ter in Marysville, Ohio, says her center
spent 300% more on cleaning costs over
the summer, while grossing $20,000 less
in June and July compared with previous
years, because of reduced enrollment.
Annette Gladstone, the co-founder of
Segray Eagle Rock preschool in Los An-
geles, tells a similar story. She’s strug-
gling to pay rent on her center’s build-
ing in part because many of the children
her company usually cares for have yet
to re-enroll. Segray Eagle Rock normally
has 177 kids; in mid-October, it was still
serving only 35 to 40 kids per day. And
again with the costs: despite the blister-
ing Southern California heat this summer,
Gladstone kept the windows open and the
air- conditioning on because the CDC in-
dicated the practice could increase venti-
lation, thus decreasing viral transmission.
Stringent government regulations de-
signed to safeguard child safety and de-
velopment are also a factor. Most states
require that day-care centers maintain
high adult-to-child ratios and ample
square footage. In some places, day-care
operators are required to hire staff trained
in early- childhood development. Thesemeasures are important. Research shows
that early- childhood education shapes
every thing from adult brain volume to
reading proficiency. “That has an im-
pact on our future labor force and their
economic potential, which ultimately is
tied to our country’s economic potential,”
says Katica Roy, a gender economist. But
these requirements also have the effect of
making day cares less nimble in the face
of economic crises.
While other enterprises can quickly
cut down on costs by downsizing, going
remote or skimping on staff, day cares
don’t have that luxury. Caretakers who
need to quarantine or call in sick also pose
outsize problems for their bosses. Since
most day cares are not currently allow-
ing parents to enter the buildings, centers
need to have enough staff to bring chil-
dren inside in the morning and back to
their parents outside in the evening. They
also need to have enough staff to watch
the children throughout the day—but
not so many that they can’t cover payroll
and other expenses, like purchasing per-
sonal protective equipment. That delicate
calculus can create huge logistical prob-
lems for both childcare operators and the
working parents who rely on them. “If I
don’t have enough staff to operate safely,”
says Meredith Kasten, who runs Early
Childhood Center in Greensboro, N.C.,
“then I have to close the whole building.”
Even in the best economic times,
childcare centers are hardly big money-
makers. The average day-care operator
grosses $48,000 a year, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, while standard
childcare workers make roughly $24,000.
Usually these jobs come with little or no
paid time off or other benefits. Only 15%
of childcare workers receive employer-
sponsored health insurance, according
to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute re-
port. (The lack of health care benefits can
be problematic under any circumstances,
but the stakes are particularly high during
an ongoing pandemic.)
As COVID-19 restrictions loosen in
some states, and parents begin to send
their kids back to day care, some child-
care operators have struggled to hire back
their laid-off staff. Part of the reason has
to do with the industry’s dismal compen-
sation. Some childcare workers actually
saw their incomes increase when they lost
their jobs, thanks to the extra $600 per