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.
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.
Rent of the daycare facility is likely sky high as well.
Honestly the number of kids per staff member is almost entirely to blame.
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.
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.
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.