ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis region is stuck in a child care deficit — a longstanding problem made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic — forcing parents to make difficult trade-offs around their work and education, and leaving employers with fewer workers in an already tight labor market.
Now child care providers, business groups and community organizations are calling for better funding for care statewide to improve early child development, ensure parents are able to pursue work and school, and boost the economy.
Heidi Geisbuhler Sutherland, director of legislative affairs for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, said that in her organization’s annual survey of CEOs, around 80% said they were worried that child care shortages were keeping people out of the workforce.
She said the concern was represented across the state, in urban, suburban and rural areas.
Stacy Johnson, chief program officer and Head Start director for the YWCA Metro St. Louis, said the issue is connected to labor shortages and pay. Some child care workers were willing to work for lower wages before the pandemic, but are now calling for a raise, she said.
Johnson said her program has more than 460 children on waitlists for child care, because of worker shortages.
“This is the employees’ market right now,” Johnson said. “They have choices.”
In a study of Missouri’s child care situation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation surveyed more than 300 parents of children under the age of 6.
Twenty-eight percent said that in the past year they or someone in their household had left a job, turned down a job, or made a significant change in their work because of problems with child care.
The survey found that low and middle-income households here spend around $445 to $622 per month on child care. High-income households spend over $880.
“It’s important to know that there are a lot of initiatives going around in our state,” Johnson said. “People are coming together, trying to find solutions. But everything, we know, is going to cost money.”
Paula-Breonne Vickers, director of early childhood power building at WEPOWER, a local group focused on economic empowerment for disadvantaged communities, pushed back on the often-used term “child care desert.”
“’Desert’ is a very kind way to address what this is,” Vickers said. “There is an opportunity to fix it — a desert is naturally occurring.”
The issue has been a subject of debate in Jefferson City this year. In January, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson asked lawmakers to back tax credit programs that would help fund providers, assist employers who offer child care assistance, and boost pay for child care workers. But the Legislature closed out its session in May without approving the proposal.
Despite COVID still going around and the fact that it likely will indefinitely, for many the pandemic is just a horrible memory. However, despite the global society shattering effects of the novel coronavirus, it did have benefits for some, including the $24 billion in federal pandemic relief for child care. But the year is now 2023 and that has just run out. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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