Source
Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE)
Summary
“Early childhood educators—largely women and often women of color—nurture and facilitate learning for millions of young children every day. Despite their important work, complex skills, and considerable experience, early educators’ working conditions currently undermine their well-being and create devastating financial insecurity well into retirement age. In turn, these conditions lead to high turnover rates and teacher staffing shortages, which limit the availability of care for families.
How early educators are treated affects how our children learn. Ensuring educators’ working conditions and well-being enables them to thrive as teachers and caregivers during the most important years of a child’s life. The essential role early childhood educators play was recognized in policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the major increases in federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in March of 2021. This pandemic relief funding provided a crucial lifeline to state and program leaders in the context of the pandemic, when thousands of programs closed and jobs were lost. This historic funding also demonstrated an opportunity and several solutions: many state and program leaders chose to invest in the working conditions and well-being of the early care and education (ECE) workforce.
But now we are at a crossroads: the last ARPA funding dedicated to child care expired at the end of September 2024, broader pandemic relief funding is dwindling, and elections across the country will bring new leadership in 2025 and beyond. The need to invest in the early care and education workforce continues, as too many early educators still struggle in poverty and programs continue to face high turnover and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff. COVID-19 relief funding was never sufficient nor was it intended to sustain the ECE system or the workforce over the long term…
What’s New in the 2024 Early Childhood Workforce Index
Since 2016, the biennial Early Childhood Workforce Index has tracked the status of ECE workforce policies in order to identify promising practices for improving early educator jobs and changes over time. This fourth edition includes new analyses as well as updated policy recommendations. Highlights include:
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- A data snapshot of the national early care and education workforce;
- 50-state data on early childhood educator wages and poverty rates, using a new methodology that includes self-employed early childhood educators like family child care providers;
- State-level data on early childhood educator households’ use of public safety net programs;
- Detailed tables on state workforce policies and initiatives, especially for Qualifications and Educational Supports, Compensation and Financial Relief, and Workforce Data;
- New data on the use of ARPA and other COVID-19 relief funding for the ECE workforce;
- A new Tribal profile in addition to a profile of the U.S. territories and individual profiles of every state and the District of Columbia.”
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