Inland Empire child care workers do vital job but rarely earn good wages

On a typical day, childcare workers play with children, read books, prepare meals, change diapers, supervise art projects, introduce vocabulary, monitor children’s emotional and developmental progress, plan curricula and keep records.

For these tasks, childcare workers in the Inland Empire earn a median rate of $18.55 per hour, or about $38,000 per year for a full-time position, according to the California Economic Development Department. By comparison, public school teachers earned an average of $95,160 in 2022-23, the California Department of Education reported.

Given the complexity of the job and its importance to families, childcare workers should be recognized and paid as teachers, advocates argued at a Zócalo Public Square forum in Redlands earlier this month.

“Childcare is early education,” said Maisha Cole, executive director of the Berkeley-based Child Care Law Center. “So all childcare work should be seen as a profession.”

The forum asked “What is a Good Job Now?” in childcare. The answers weren’t surprising: fair pay, decent benefits and recognition of the work.

“There are sectors of childcare where there are no benefits,” said Lisa Wilkin, executive director of the Child Development Consortium of Los Angeles. “There’s no time off. The wages are low. The working conditions are challenging … It’s such hard work for so little reward.”

But low wages for caregivers doesn’t translate into low rates for parents. Parents in California pay an average of $16,000 per year for home-based infant care and $19,500 per year at daycare centers, according to the First Five Years Fund.

Inadequate childcare causes workers to miss shifts and leads many women to cut back work hours or leave their jobs entirely.

High quality childcare is not only expensive, but it’s unavailable to many families. There aren’t enough spaces for kids who need care. Speakers said training more workers won’t help unless there are stable, well-paid jobs for them.

“It’s not a workforce shortage; it’s a shortage of good-paying jobs,” said Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “Until we raise the wages and offer better conditions … no amount of training will help.”

To ensure good jobs and affordable childcare there needs to be public investment in the system, much as there is for K-12 and higher education, speakers argued.

“Childcare doesn’t have a dedicated funding source,” Cole said. “K-12 and colleges get money from the state, whereas childcare has to fight every year to keep funding or increase funding.”

Why isn’t childcare a higher priority? Speakers said lack of information about early childhood development plays a part. When people see kids playing with blocks, they may not know the children are developing spatial abilities, math knowledge and social skills, for example.

“A lot of times we don’t do a good job of communicating what they’re learning while they’re playing,” Wilkin said.

Childcare providers need to tell their stories to elected officials, from mayors and city councils to state lawmakers and Congress members, speakers said.

“The more calls, the more memorable the stories are, the more this gets prioritized,” Poo said, adding that paying living wages for childcare jobs is a “triple dignity investment, about the dignity of the worker, children and parents.”