by Black Enterprise
July 30, 2025
Early childcare workers are paid less than animal caretakers
Caring for children during their first few years is a complex and critical job: A child’s brain develops more in the first five years than at any other point in life. Yet in America, individuals engaged in this crucial role are paid less than animal caretakers and dressing room attendants, The Hechinger Report explains.
That’s a major finding of one of two new reports on the dismal treatment of childcare workers. Together, the reports offer a distressing picture of how childcare staff are faring economically, including the troubling changes low wages have caused to the workforce.
Early childhood workers nationally earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, resulting in poverty-level earnings for 13% of such educators, according to the first report, the Early Childhood Workforce Index 2024. Released earlier this month by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, the annual report also found:
43% of families of early educators rely on public assistance like food stamps and Medicaid.
Pay inequity exists within these low wages: Black early childhood educators earn about $8,000 less per year than their white peers. The same pay gap exists between early educators who work with infants and toddlers and those who work with preschoolers, who have more opportunities to work in school districts that pay higher wages.
Wages for early educators are rising more slowly than wages in other industries, including fast food and retail.
In part due to these conditions, the industry is losing some of its highest-educated workers, according to a second new report by Chris M. Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs. That study compares the pay of childcare workers with that of workers in other lower-income professions, including cooks and retail workers; it finds childcare workers are the tenth lowest-paid occupation out of around 750 in the economy. The report also examines the ‘relative quality’ of childcare staff, as measured by math and literacy scores and educational level. Higher-educated workers, Herbst suggests, are being siphoned off by higher-paying jobs.
That’s led to a “bit of a death spiral” in terms of how childcare work is perceived, and contributes to the persistent low wages, he said in an interview. Some additional findings from Herbst’s study:
Higher-educated women increasingly find employment in the childcare industry to be less attractive. The share of workers in the childcare industry with a bachelor’s degree barely budged over the past few decades, increasing by only 0.3%. In contrast, the share of those in the industry who have 12 years of schooling but no high school degree, quadrupled.
Median numeracy and literacy scores for female childcare workers (who are the majority of the industry staff) fall at the 35th and 36th percentiles, respectively, compared to all female workers. Improving these scores is important, Herbst says, considering the importance of education in the early years, when children experience rapid brain development.
This doesn’t mean childcare staff with lower education levels can’t be good early educators. Patience, communication skills, and a commitment to working with young children also matter greatly, Herbst writes. However, higher education levels may mean staff have a stronger background not only in English and math but also in topics like behavior modification and special education, which are sometimes left out of certification programs for childcare teachers.
Read Herbst’s full report and the 2024 workforce index.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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