Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

On May 11—A Day Without Child Care, when providers across the country closed their doors to make the workforce crisis visible and advocate for thriving wages—the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) proposed rolling back the wage and benefit rules it issued just two years ago for the Head Start program. Those 2024 rules were […]

As states continue to explore methods for supporting the workforce, salary scales can serve as a tool for advancing early educator compensation and addressing systemic workforce issues within ECE. States can use salary scales to support or plan for implementation of wage increases and to move towards competitive wages and stable increases for early educators.  […]

Because profit margins are so tight, child care programs—especially home-based or family child care—struggle to provide family-sustaining wages or employer-sponsored benefits like health care.  Lack of access to benefits in combination with low wages means that nearly one half (43 percent) of early educator families rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNA...