High turnover in childcare sector holds back broader workforce

Turnover among U.S. childcare workers was about 65% higher than turnover in the median occupation in 2022, which creates challenges for the broader workforce, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Roughly half of childcare workers leaving their jobs exit the labor force entirely, often citing obligations at home.

Turnover in the childcare sector is often linked to low wages. Childcare workers in 2022 had the 10th lowest annual median wage out of 825 occupations with publicly available wage data.

“The pay for a childcare worker does not provide a living wage for a single adult plus one child in any state,” writes Kyle Fee, Community Development Policy Advisor at the Cleveland Fed.

Many providers had relied on funding from the American Rescue Plan’s Child Care Stabilization Program, which recently expired.

Stability in the sector matters to the broader economy, helping promote full employment “while building the foundation for the workforce of the future,” Fee writes.

Read the report: Using Worker Flows to Assess the Stability of the Early Childcare and Education Workforce, 2010–2022