Summary
Child care costs for many U.S. families during peak inflation in 2022 ranged from $6,552 to $15,600 per child, comparable to rent, according to Labor Department data.
These high costs strained household budgets, disproportionately impacted women’s workforce participation, and fueled economic dissatisfaction among voters.
While Kamala Harris proposed policies to reduce child care costs, Donald Trump capitalized on broader economic grievances to expand his voter base, despite offering few specifics on addressing the issue.
Pandemic-era federal aid helped stabilize costs but left parents bearing much of the financial burden.
Aren’t staff at daycares way under paid? Where is all the money going?
Some of it is skimmed off, sure, but most of it is because it’s fucking expensive to employ people to just watch kids.
I just picked a state. Average infant daycare cost is $1172/mo. Maximum of 4 infants per caregiver, so a maximum of $4.688.
Health insurance here averages $400/mo, for an individual (some often paid by the employer).
Assuming they are employed, the employer is paying for federal unemployment insurance, workers compensation insurance, state unemployment insurance. It was really hard to get solid numbers but based on my reading, we can estimate about 2% will go to that.
So we have $4296 left over. Assuming payroll and supplies and everything else costs nothing at all (which is definitely not accurate), and assuming we give the rest straight to the employee… Their gross would be $51,000 roughly.
The average daycare worker in this state makes about $33k/year.
There’s tons and tons of federal and state funds for individual daycares, group centers etc. Some of it specifically to help boost payroll. Still doesn’t help because it gets eaten away by the bureaucracy.
The 4 to 1 ratio gets aged out of real quickly. In fact I am not sure we ever got that ratio with our daycare.
Rent of the daycare facility is likely sky high as well.
Honestly the number of kids per staff member is almost entirely to blame.
I was thinking it would be 1 adult for every 8-10 kids but others are saying it is legally mandated to be 1 adult to 2-5 kids which means you are paying half a persons salary.
It depends on the age of the kids. Infants have fewer kids per adult than Pre-K does.
Daycare got cheaper as my son got older. Always loved him moving up to a, new room. Of course, 30 years ago, were talking about $125/week or so when he was an infant.
Yeah and not just pure take home. Also any benefits(though in this industry they’d be the worst of they’re even offered), making sure you have a correct staffing matrix, and taxes/unemployment insurance. It’s pretty cost prohibitive, depending on age. And once it’s not, the kid really can stay home alone.
The owners.
It’s not regulated and generally it’s hired as “low skill” (it really fucking isn’t) so they’re very replaceable.
The easiest money is made on old farts and new farts. Nursing homes care assistants are basically on minimum wage while the owners rake in the money.
It’s priced, what are you going to do? Not go to work and stay with your gran or child?
Really awesome that we as a society consider people watching our children at the most important part of their lives “low skill.”
Imagine what our test scores would be like if we considered them as important as hedge fund managers and marketing executives.
I am in the northeast and it is heavily regulated down to how many hours staff can be on duty and levels of staffing, the simple fact is that especially for those under twelve (where the rules are generally at least two people at all times for a group of ten, under three is literally 1 person per two children), ensuring that you have 10-12 hours of sufficient coverage (most ppl work 8-9 hours plus travel time to work) from background checked and fingerprinted persons while also feeding the children and keep a commercial building open is expensive.
I’m glad some places do it right!
Do public schools even have that ratio of adults to children?
Not in my neck of the woods, they are aiming for 25 kids per teacher eventually in NYC 🙄, and meanwhile some older NY folks say we baby the young cause they were upto 50 to a teacher when they went to school, like we shouldn’t try to progress.
A senior teacher at the KinderCare that my kid to makes $25/hr. Minimum wage here is $20/hr. The cost per month was about $2500 per child.
My friend shared how he was able to get a deal of $2500 a month for two kids.
Rent is a factor probably.
I’m pretty sure they are underpaid.
Hey that’s fine, JD Vance says grandparents can take care of the kids!
Grandparents never have jobs themselves, right?
And some grandparents are child molesters, or are abusive in other ways, who will never be allowed to see their grandchildren.
Or dead, or too old to handle them, or don’t live near you, or just don’t want to be bothered. My parents are great, but they did tell me straight up that they wouldn’t be a substitute for daycare. They do a lot but just don’t want to be responsible like that, and I honestly don’t blame them. They watch them whenever we need a babysitter or have to travel for events which is great. My wife’s parents are dead.
I love my mom, but I know how she raised me and I know how she was with my daughter when she stayed the night on occasion and I wouldn’t have let her watch my daughter long term when she was little. She’s not abusive, but she’s on the narcissistic side with a temper and she can’t handle a small child violating her unwritten rules.
I remember there was a wicker wastebasket in the room she had set up for my daughter and, being a small child, she had picked it apart while left alone up there. The fit my mom threw at me was not fun. At least she didn’t throw it at her… but I knew she would eventually.
That’s a plus to Vance, not a minus. And they’ll be allowed to now.
Every republican knows you can’t rape your own property.
The rest of the 1st World is way ahead of the USA. I like it when the American politicians and business leaders say family values are important. In reality, that is last thing on their fucking minds and the US Labor Laws and paternity leave proves it. If you want to have a family, move to Norway, Sweden, Finland or Denmark.
And people wonder why I don’t want to have kids.
And yet the childcare WORKERS can barely afford to live.
You know, I’m starting to wonder if maybe families should form some sort of social club and hire childcare workers directly???
Sure is great how Manchin killed the childcare provision of BBB.
Centrists made this happen. Now tell us again how we’re imagining not being able to afford to live.
Good thing too, its not my responsibility to care for or support anyone else’s crotch goblin bastards.
I hope when you do need help noones around to hear you.
Can’t tell if centrist or republican.
Small-l libertarian, classical liberal, minarchist, or maybe even an Ancap, I’m not quite sure, but whichever gets the government to go away and leave people alone to live their lives as they seem fit. All the parties today are trash, compromised by foreign interests, corporations, billionaires, grifters, or worse, and I want nothing to do with them.
What’s your plan for when the government isn’t there and your local warlords…i mean amazon service representatives come to your house and take all your shit or enslave you? Not like you’ll be able to call the police or anything since you don’t want government.
Or hell, whats your plan to get rid of your garbage when there is no government? Throw it into your neighbors yard?
Or hell, whats your plan to get rid of your garbage when there is no government?
The bears will take care of it.
Garbage, uhmm, you pay a monthly fee (about $30) and they take it away weekly, or if its burnable, it goes on the brush pile until the pile gets tall enough that you need a bigger tractor to pile it any higher.
Police… Definitely wouldn’t waste time calling them, the action would be over before they even finished their donuts.
That’s literally what’s happening right now and the corporations are running amok, so this doesn’t work in the slightest
Right. Greedy and callous and serving the corpos and billionaires you unconvincingly claim to oppose.
How does childcare benefit anyone but children and parents?
Are you kidding? Childcare benefits the economy. More people in the workforce full time rather than needing to stay home and watch kids, more money in the system than spent on childcare, and a more skilled workforce as people are able to stay in careers longer. It also benefits society as kids are able to have earlier socialization and learning opportunities and have better outcomes growing up.
I can see why libertarians oppose it.
Libertarians are morons
I hate society as much as you do but as long as I’m forced to live in it I’d like to hear fewer people complaining.
Down voted, Lemmy as it were.
Yep 10 years ago when my wife was the full time worker and I wanted to work. I would have to have been making $23 per hour to make a profit on working. The cheapest childcare we could find would have me paying childcare costs that exceeded a 40 hour per week check. I would have to pay to have a job. Best I could find at the time was $16.50 so I just elected to save money by not working.
A vasectomy is a hell of a deal.
Oklahoma paid for mine for free. Thanks to Plan Parenthood.
rip my balls off
All I could afford.
I pay 200 bucks for kindergarten in Norway, and most of it is tax refundable
All my coworkers by 1200 to 1600 in usd per per month per kid. This is unsustainable. Unless you have 2 people with no college debt making bank.
Nobody wants to work anymore! Nobody wants to have kids anymore!
Fuck me, I wonder why? Every inch of all of it sucks and costs too much.
People don’t want to work so much because they want quality time with their kids. People don’t want to work jobs that don’t pay them enough to even have kids, let alone not have enough free time to actually build a life with those kids.
Jesus fucking christ! I’m so happy I live in a sane country, we pay $250 for two children, and it’s only going down the older they get.
Wait it’s supposed to go down? It increases the older they are at mine.
For us it does, since bigger kids are easier to take care of than babies.
Makes sense. The US is backwards lol
That it is, and it’s not looking like it’s getting better any time soon 🙃
Childcare? Y’all don’t just leave your kids unsupervised at home?
/s Don’t do that, but like thats reality tho. Some people do that.
