Full Citation
Title: Early Educator Compensation Findings From the 2020 California Early Care and Education Workforce Study
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2022
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Abstract: As we enter yet another phase of a pandemic that has highlighted the essential nature of early care and education (ECE) services, California’s ECE sector is experiencing dire staffing shortages (Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, 2022) due in part to the low wages of ECE providers. As of this writing, California has 7,200 fewer child care slots and 7,000 fewer child care jobs than in February 2020, before the onset of the pandemic (Assembly Budget Committee, 2022; BLS Beta Labs, 2022). Throughout the state, administrators cite compensation as a main barrier to recruiting and retaining staff (Kim et al., 2022). The low wages and lack of benefits for the California ECE workforce are increasingly recognized and decried (McLean et al., 2021; Gould et al., 2019; Whitebook et al., 2014). But ECE jobs are not just low wage, they are among the worst-paid jobs in the United States. Although early educators provide the foundation for quality ECE programs and are the backbone of the economy, the wages of child care workers rank in the bottom 2 percent of all occupations, averaging $11.65 per hour nationally (McLean et al., 2021). In the State of California, the ECE workforce is largely women of color (Powell, Kim, et al., 2022). For centuries, care work, the work of women, and the work of people of color have been undervalued in our country (Gould et al., 2021; Austin et al., 2019). This reality, coupled with insufficient public funding and a reliance on parents to shoulder most costs of ECE services, has debilitated the sector. The result is a system in which the vast majority of the workforce does not earn a living wage, with dire consequences for their well-being. Furthermore, this arrangement does not work well for families that struggle to find and afford the care they want and need for their children. This report draws on findings from the California Early Care and Education Workforce Study to report income and benefits of licensed family child care (FCC) providers and center-based directors, teachers, and assistant teachers. This study is the first comprehensive examination of California’s workforce in 15 years. Despite a growing understanding of the importance of early learning and development and the expansion of quality improvement initiatives during this time, little has been done to address the economic well-being of educators themselves. Early educators’ wages are still low. In fact, we estimate that teachers with bachelor’s degrees working in California child care centers saw a decline in actual wages of 1 to 2.5 percent between 2006 and 2022, despite a 35-percent increase in the minimum wage over the same period. To better understand variations and inequities in the system, we examine compensation by educator role and education level as well as program type and funding. We also provide findings by region, when sample sizes allow (see Appendix 2 for map of study regions).
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Authors: Montoya, Elena; Austin, Lea J E; Powell, Anna; Kim, Yoonjeon; Petig, Abby Copeman; Muruvi, Wanzi
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare
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