Underpaid and Undervalued: Covering the Early Ed Workforce

One of the most long-standing, persistent challenges in the early childhood education industry is maintaining the workforce who cares for and educates young children each day. Early childhood educators are in short supply and paid far below other teachers and American workers. 

America’s early childhood workforce is large and diverse, comprising more than 2.2 million educators in a variety of early learning settings. The vast majority of these educators are women, and 40% are between the ages of 30 and 49, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. Nearly half of listed home-based providers and 40% of center-based early educators are women of color. Providers who care for children in home-based settings are more likely to speak a language other than English, and 1 in 5 child care workers is an immigrant. 

The most common type of child care in America is provided by family, friend and neighbor (FFN) caregivers who are often unlicensed and may be unpaid. An estimated more than 4.5 million informal caregivers provide this type of care, which is especially common for infants and toddlers, immigrant families and families with non-traditional work hours. Many family, friend and neighbor caregivers lack access to resources and funding provided to formal, licensed providers and may not know they are eligible to receive child care subsidy payments for qualifying children in their care. Twenty-three states have no known supports for FFN providers, according to a 2022 report by the BUILD Initiative. On the other hand, some states have recently made efforts to help FFN providers follow pathways to become formal family child care homes, licensed within state systems.

This sprawling system can be hard for reporters to navigate, said Aaron Loewenberg, a senior policy analyst with the Education Policy program at New America, a left-leaning think tank. 

“When we think about early education, a lot of us think about child care centers,” he said. Early childhood education “is not as clear and clean as K-12, and some of the data you would think is easy to find, like the average pay of someone who works in child care, can be pretty difficult because you can slice it up in so many different ways. Are you talking about care at home? Are you talking about a center? Someone who takes care of neighborhood kids?”

Pay Disparities Within America’s Workforce 

Nationwide, early childhood educators do not earn a livable wage in any state. Early educators are paid a median wage of $13.07 per hour, less than dog walkers, tour guides and bellhops and less than half of the median of $31.80 for elementary and middle school teachers. More than 13% of the early childhood workforce lives in poverty. Many child care staff lack benefits and paid leave. Across the child care industry, teacher turnover is persistently high, especially when compared to other occupations. Higher wages have been associated with lower levels of turnover.

Disparities exist within the workforce when it comes to pay. Those who work with infants and toddlers tend to make less money than those who work with older children. The workplace setting also makes a difference in pay. Head Start teachers and teachers affiliated with public pre-K programs earn more than those in other early learning programs. Black early childhood educators earn about $8,000 less per year than their white peers.

Early ed wages have failed to keep up with growth in other sectors. During the pandemic, many early educators were attracted to higher-paying jobs with less risk, including in retail stores and fast food. In a 2024 survey, 36% of child care program administrators reported that they didn’t have enough staff, and 37% said compensation was too low to help with recruiting and retaining staff. Nearly 50% of early educators said their “sense of burnout” has worsened since the previous year, mostly due to low wages and the physical and mental demands of the job. 

Educator Qualifications and the Push for Industry Deregulation

While many child care providers do have ample training and education, states vary greatly when it comes to setting minimum qualifications for child care staff, including teachers and directors. For example, in some states, a teacher must be at least 18 years old, have a high school diploma, several years of experience and/or a credential to work as a child care teacher. In others, teenagers with little-to-no training can hold those positions, a trend that has become more common under deregulatory proposals by conservative lawmakers. When it comes to program directors, four states require a high school diploma or GED while five states require either an associate degree or bachelor’s degree. 

Nearly 30% of early childhood educators who work in a child care center, and 20% of those who work in a home, have a bachelor’s degree or higher. 

“These are folks that are very skilled and have substantial expertise in child development,” said Caitlin McLean, director of multi-state and international programs at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, a nonprofit focused on early childhood workforce research and policy. “They have incredible diversity in ethnicity and the languages that they speak, and this is one of the strengths, frankly, that early care and education has, especially when you compare it with K-12.” 

Many child care providers earn a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential or an associate degree, and some national programs, such as the Child Care WAGE$ program, offer compensation bonuses for obtaining higher levels of education. In 12 states, center-based teachers must have at least a CDA or equivalent credential to work.

In recent years, to address staffing shortages made worse by the pandemic, a growing number of states have proposed deregulating child care, seeking to lower training requirements and age limits, so teenagers can fill child care positions. In Kansas, for example, lawmakers in 2023 proposed putting teenagers as young as 14 in classrooms. In 2024, Iowa lawmakers proposed allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to care for infants and toddlers alone and unsupervised. South Carolina recently relaxed a requirement that child care employees must have at least six months of experience working in a licensed facility.

State Solutions and Unions 

A growing number of states have tried to buoy the workforce by offering compensation programs and benefits. At least a dozen states – including Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa and Arizona – have considered or are rolling out programs that offer free or subsidized child care for those who work in the child care industry. In 2022, Washington D.C. started providing around $10,000 in bonuses to qualifying child care workers to achieve pay parity with public K-12 teachers. Other states have also proposed or created wage enhancement programs – though to a lesser degree – including Alaska, Maine and Massachusetts. 

Some child care providers have found success by unionizing, but it can be a challenge for the industry due to high-turnover rates and the sprawling nature of the industry, comprised mostly of independent, small businesses.  In California, child care providers have made momentum in benefits and pay by unionizing. Child Care Providers United won collective bargaining rights in 2019 and now represent around 40,000 providers who care for children in home-based settings. The union’s contracts have secured funding for a health care fund and wage increases. Child care providers have also unionized in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Reporting Tips

• Remember to include a variety of child care educators in your stories, including formal and informal caregivers as well as teachers in center and home-based programs.
• Many members of the early childhood workforce view the term ‘day care’ as pejorative and minimizing or simplifying the complex work. Using terms like “child care teacher” or “early learning educator” and respecting opposition to “day care” can help build and respect trust among sources. 
• Some sources of federal research into the workforce, including the Regional Education Laboratories, have faced cuts under the Trump administration. Reporters should look into what research we stand to lose from these cuts and how a lack of information could affect young children and efforts to shore up the workforce.
• Reporters should look at trusted sources, such as the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, for data on the workforce, Loewenberg said, and also pay attention to the various types of child care settings when talking about data and workforce.