NUMBER OF THE DAY
The Childcare Crisis, By the Numbers
As remote school grips the country, women are quitting their jobs in droves
21%: That’s how many companies have experienced workers quitting to focus on childcare demands, according to a survey from nonprofit WorldatWork cited by Business Insider.
“Back to school” for much of the country this year doesn’t mean back to anywhere — other than working parents being forced to make agonizing choices between professional and family obligations. And once again, some observers suggest that the dramatic shift to remote school will hit working women the hardest. A Bureau of Labor Statistics breakdown of American labor force growth by gender shows the number of male workers over age 20 up by 608,000 in August, while the number of women workers shrank by 5,000.
The issue seems particularly acute for essential workers whose jobs can’t shift into Zoom mode. “More than 40 percent of working Americans have to leave home for their job,” The Atlantic notes. The narrowing options for childcare are expensive and may still be risky; there’s been little in the way of concrete relief from the government.
That’s left it to employers concerned about talent leaving the workforce to step in with help. Business Insider reports that Bank of America and Salesforce, among others, are providing reimbursements to cover childcare costs. “We don’t want to have a childcare crisis, in the macro sense,” a Bank of America exec commented, “because if we do, we’re not going to be able to have productive employees and teammates who can do their jobs.”
America’s childcare crisis is driving parents to the brink — and women out of the workforce.
