New Report Shows How Child Care Crisis Hits Employers' Bottom Lines

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report spotlights a surprising danger to today's booming economy: $57 billion in lost earnings, productivity and revenue as millions of working parents struggle to find affordable, high-quality child care, particularly for infants and toddlers up to the age of three.

The report, "Want to Grow the Economy? Fix the Child Care Crisis," was released today by ReadyNation, a nonpartisan organization of 2,000 business leaders. The report is among the first to demonstrate the financial impact of the infant and toddler care crisis on employers and taxpayers. It shows employers losing about $13 billion annually due to child care challenges faced by their workforces, and taxpayers overall losing about $7 billion annually. This is on top of the $37 billion in losses among working parents.

Losses to employers stem from extra costs to hire new employees to replace parents who quit because they can't afford child care, from lower productivity when work is disrupted by child care problems, and from lower revenues based on lower worker output.

Taxpayers are burdened by costs from lower GDP and lower revenues from sales and consumption taxes when working parents become less productive due to child care struggles.

Costs to working parents come from lost earnings, lost opportunities for training and promotions, and extra costs as they search for child care or alternative work when their jobs are compromised by child care struggles.

ReadyNation released the report with the launch of a 2019 campaign to encourage state and federal lawmakers to take bold action to make quality child care more affordable and accessible to working parents by addressing key problems:

ACCESS:  Nearly one-third of parents report difficulty finding child care. Availability is especially limited to parents of infants and toddlers, to those who work evenings and weekends, and those in rural areas.

AFFORDABILITY: The average annual cost of center-based care for infants is more than the average cost of public college tuition and fees in 28 states.

QUALITY: Only 11 percent of child care nationwide is accredited.

Read the ReadyNation report and learn about three U.S. Companies taking action to make quality child care more affordable and accessible to their workforces:

http://bit.ly/ChildCareCrisis

Talk with a ReadyNation campaign news source about what's next: 302-448-0253

SOURCE ReadyNation

Related Links

http://bit.ly/ChildCareCrisis