Who Cares for Children? (For Pay)

Child care workforce since the 1960s

Child care workers are overwhelmingly women, poorly paid relative to the average worker, and more likely to live in poverty.

Since 1968, the earliest year the Current Population Survey collected standardized child care occupation variables, the gap between the average age of all employed respondents and child care workers has closed.

Unlike age, the sex composition hasn’t changed much. Women made up 97.5% of the child care workforce in 1968; in 2024, they make up 96.7% of it. For all employed, women jumped from 36.8% in 1968 to 47.2% in 2024.

Gender Divisions of Market and Non-Market Care Work

On a real basis, child care workers’ personal income has grown substantially. 1968 child care workers reported annual personal income of $4,871 in 2024 dollars. These days, they make an average of $34,601. In 1968, child care workers made less than 10% the average personal income of all employed respondents. Today, it’s about 45% — still very low, but less than of a share gap than it used to be.

Rising personal income, however, came along with rising work hours. In 1968, childcare workers reported working an average of 17.6 hours in the prior week (or $5.28 an hour in 2024, assuming 52 weeks of work). By 2024, that had risen to 33.2 hours on average ($20.04/hour).

Despite these income increases, the poverty level among child care workers remains stubbornly high. In 1974, 8.9% lived below the poverty line, compared to 5.2% for all employed people. In 2024, it was 10.5%, compared to 4.4% for all employed people.

Education has also increased over time — but why such a big drop in the number of childcare workers between 1968 and 1974? For the employed population as a whole, it did drop, but only by 9% points (39.3% in 1968 to 30.1% in 1974). Here I turned to the industry variables.

In 1968, 100% of childcare workers reported working in private households and personal services (a single category). Now, it’s possible that daycare or private kindergarten counted as personal services, I don’t know. But I think we are looking at sample that was a lot of domestic laborers. By 1974, that had dropped to 54.1%, and by 1984 to 30.3%. Today, it’s 9% — much higher than the employed population, where less than 1% works in private households (compared to 3% in 1968), but still less than a fifth of what it was in 1974. Given that domestic laborers have historically few employment protections, this may also help account for childcare worker’s minuscule wages in 1968.

The District of Columbia somewhat recently enacted higher education standards for childcare workers at licensed centers, only to be met with lawsuits and some parental outcry. Whether you think college courses are the right path to high quality child care or not, the graph above shows that most child care workers have at least some college experience, though the survey doesn’t track what sort of classes they took. DC’s education requirements are not, in my opinion, particularly onerous in general — center directors need a bachelor’s degree with at least 15 hours of relevant coursework; lead teachers need at least 24 credit hours of relevant coursework — though of course individual child care workers may have trouble completing or paying for needed courses. DC’s law doesn’t, however, require directors or teachers to get the same level of education required for elementary school principals or kindergarten teachers.

Despite increasing educational completion, the wage benefits of higher education have actually decreased both within the childcare workforce and as compared to the broader employed sample. In 1974, childcare workers with high school diplomas could expect to make almost three times those without high school diplomas. In 2024, that had narrowed to twice the amount. For workers with at least four years of college, the could have expected to earn 3.5x what they would have earned with less education in 1974. In 2024, it was 1.8x. That means childcare workers without a high school diploma or a bachelor’s degree aren’t falling behind, but does lessen the material benefits of pursuing more education.