Still Underpaid and Unequal: Early Childhood Educators Face Low Pay and a Worsening Wage Gap
By Maureen Coffey
Formal child care and early education environments are a significant part of many young children’s development. Around two-thirds of children younger than age 6 in the United States have all available parents in the labor force,1making care arrangements a prominent aspect of families’ daily lives. While not all families use licensed child care, a prior Center for American Progress analysis of census data found that more than 7.3 million children were in a licensed child care arrangement
The people who work with children in these environments are the main factor in the quality of early care and education.3 But, despite the integral role that early childhood educators play, they are compensated with low to poverty wages for their work. Child care workers remain nearly at the bottom of all U.S. occupations when ranked by annual pay, and they struggle to make ends meet—frequently relying upon public income support programs.4
This issue brief contains a new CAP analysis of recently released 2019 early childhood workforce data, including demographics, credentials and qualifications, and compensation.
Image by Drazen Zigic on Freepik
