Child care pay still lags despite decades of policy change

For more than three decades, expanding and strengthening the early childhood care and education workforce has been an important goal of state and federal policy.

三十多年来，扩大和加强幼儿保育和教育劳动力一直是州和联邦政策的重要目标。

The industry’s foundational challenges are well-documented: thin profit margins , low worker pay , and high employee turnover .

该行业面临的基本挑战是有据可查的：利润微薄、工人工资低、员工流动率高。

These conditions ripple outward, leaving families with uneven access to care, children with less stable relationships, and providers facing persistent recruitment and retention challenges.

这些情况向外蔓延，导致家庭获得护理的机会不平等，儿童关系不稳定，服务提供者面临持续的招聘和保留挑战。

Policy has changed in response.

政策也随之改变。

States poured investment into universal pre-K through public-school and mixed-delivery models, raised minimum wages, and pushed professionalization through Quality Rating and Improvement Systems and credentialing requirements .

各州通过公立学校和混合授课模式对普及学前教育投入大量资金，提高最低工资，并通过质量评级和改进系统以及资格认证要求推动专业化。

At the federal level, Head Start and the Child Care and Development Fund expanded access for low-income children, and the federal government met a struggling pandemic child care market with a $39 billion infusion through the American Rescue Plan (ARP).

在联邦层面，Head Start 和儿童保育与发展基金扩大了低收入儿童的入学机会，联邦政府通过美国救援计划 (ARP) 注入了 390 亿美元，应对大流行病儿童保育市场的困境。

Although these efforts were aimed primarily at children and families, each could plausibly have reshaped the workforce as well by drawing in more credentialed workers, raising qualification requirements, or, in the case of minimum wage increases and the ARP, lifting pay directly.

尽管这些努力主要针对儿童和家庭，但每项努力都可以通过吸引更多有资格的工人、提高资格要求，或者在提高最低工资和ARP的情况下直接提高工资来重塑劳动力队伍。

To explore whether decades of policy reshaped the child care workforce, I drew on 35 years of nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey (1990-2025) in a new study .

为了探讨数十年的政策是否重塑了儿童保育劳动力，我在一项新的研究中利用了当前人口调查（1990-2025）中 35 年的全国代表性数据。

1 Rather than treat child care as a single industry, I disaggregate it into three distinct settings: school-, center-, and home-based care.

1 我没有将儿童保育视为一个单一行业，而是将其分为三个不同的环境：学校保育、中心保育和家庭保育。

I examine the demographic composition and economic conditions within each over time and then benchmark them against the broader female and low-wage labor markets.

我随着时间的推移研究了每个国家的人口构成和经济状况，然后将它们与更广泛的女性和低工资劳动力市场进行比较。

The data tell a consistent story: Child care workers are more educated and better paid than they were in 1990, but they are still falling behind other women and low-wage workers.

这些数据讲述了一个一致的故事：与 1990 年相比，儿童保育工作者受教育程度更高，报酬也更高，但他们仍然落后于其他女性和低薪工人。

Measured against itself, the child care workforce looks like it is moving up.

与自身相比，儿童保育劳动力似乎正在上升。

Since the early 1990s, the share of child care workers without a high school diploma has fallen by more than half, while the share holding a bachelor’s degree or more has climbed from 20% to 32%.

自20世纪90年代初以来，没有高中文凭的儿童保育员比例下降了一半以上，而拥有学士学位或以上学位的比例则从20%攀升至32%。

Pay appears to have followed, with average hourly wages rising from $14.25 to $22.15 in 2025 dollars.

薪资似乎也随之上涨，按 2025 年美元计算，平均时薪从 14.25 美元上涨至 22.15 美元。

More schooling, higher wages: These seem like positive signals of a workforce on the rise.

更多的教育、更高的工资：这些似乎是劳动力增长的积极信号。

Breaking the numbers out by setting shows where those changes came from.

通过设置来分解数字可以显示这些变化的来源。

Home-based care, long the least-credentialed and lowest-paid corner of the market, moved the furthest.

家庭护理长期以来一直是市场上资质最差、收入最低的领域，但进展最远。

These workers’ hourly wages more than doubled, rising by about $9 an hour, as seen in Figure 1.

这些工人的时薪增加了一倍多，每小时上涨约 9 美元，如图 1 所示。

(Not pictured: The share of home-based providers with a high school diploma or less fell during this period from 70% to 42%.) Center-based pay rose meaningfully as well.

（未图示：在此期间，具有高中或以下文凭的家庭提供者的比例从 70% 下降到 42%。）中心薪资也大幅上涨。

School-based jobs, which were already the most educated and best paid, only modestly improved.

学校工作原本是受教育程度最高、薪酬最高的工作，但仅略有改善。

Taken in isolation, this looks unambiguously like progress.

孤立地看，这看起来毫无疑问是进步。

The mirage dissolves only when these gains are compared to the rest of the labor market.

只有将这些收益与劳动力市场的其他部分进行比较时，这种幻象才会消失。

Let’s compare child care workers’ earnings to the earnings of women overall.

让我们将儿童保育员的收入与女性的整体收入进行比较。

In the early 1990s, the average woman earned $20,000 a year more than the average child care worker.

20 世纪 90 年代初，女性平均年收入比儿童保育员平均多 20,000 美元。

Today, she earns $28,000 more (Figure 2).

如今，她的收入增加了 28,000 美元（图 2）。

Child care pay climbed over those decades, but other women’s pay climbed faster.

这几十年来，儿童保育员的工资不断攀升，但其他女性的工资增长得更快。

When comparing child care workers to other low-wage workers , the story is similarly bleak.

当将儿童保育员与其他低薪工人进行比较时，情况同样黯淡。

Child care workers still earn about $8,000 less than other low-wage workers, per year, on average.

儿童保育员的平均年收入仍比其他低薪工人少约 8,000 美元。

That gap has narrowed from roughly $11,000 in the early 1990s, but closing a quarter of the gap over three-and-a-half decades is slow progress.

这一差距从 20 世纪 90 年代初的约 11,000 美元开始缩小，但在三年半的时间里缩小四分之一的差距进展缓慢。

And what’s more, this gap persists despite child care being a better-educated workforce: 66% of child care workers have at least some college, compared to 52% of low-wage workers.

更重要的是，尽管儿童保育人员是受过良好教育的劳动力，但这种差距仍然存在：66% 的儿童保育人员至少受过大学教育，而低薪工人的这一比例为 52%。

Child care workers are more credentialed than the low-wage workers they trail in earnings.

儿童保育员比收入落后的低薪工人更有资格。

I should note some compositional changes in the workforce.

我应该注意到劳动力构成的一些变化。

School-based employment held steady, center-based care grew, and (lower-paid) home-based care slid from about 1 in 4 child care workers in the early 1990s to roughly 1 in 7 today.

以学校为基础的就业保持稳定，以中心为基础的护理有所增长，而（工资较低的）家庭护理人员从 20 世纪 90 年代初的约四分之一的儿童保育员下降到如今的约七分之一。

But that reshuffling is not what drives the trends in pay.

但这种重组并不是薪酬趋势的驱动力。

If the mix of settings had stayed at its 1990 level, earnings would have followed nearly the same path.

如果环境组合保持在 1990 年的水平，收入将遵循几乎相同的路径。

My analysis indicates that pay rose primarily because the workforce became more credentialed, not because workers moved into better-paying settings.

我的分析表明，工资上涨主要是因为劳动力变得更有资格，而不是因为工人进入了工资更高的环境。

The American Rescue Plan provides a glimpse of whether a sudden infusion of flexible public funding , which providers could spend on compensation, yields higher worker earnings.

美国救援计划让我们得以一睹突然注入灵活的公共资金（供应商可以将其用于赔偿）是否会带来更高的工人收入。

Unfortunately, its effects on wages look fleeting.

不幸的是，它对工资的影响看起来转瞬即逝。

Hourly wages rose directly around the pandemic, in 2020-2021.

2020-2021 年，在疫情期间，每小时工资直接上涨。

However, annual earnings stayed roughly flat, since hourly gains were offset by fewer weeks worked.

然而，年收入基本持平，因为每小时的收入被工作周数的减少所抵消。

Furthermore, by the end of pandemic-era aid, real hourly wages had drifted back toward pre-pandemic levels.

此外，到大流行时期的援助结束时，实际时薪已回到大流行前的水平。

Turnover followed the same pattern (Figure 3).

营业额遵循相同的模式（图 3）。

Center-based turnover, which had fallen from 30% in the early 1990s to 24% by 2005-2010, reverted back to 29%, erasing 15 years of progress.

以中心为基础的营业额从 1990 年代初的 30% 下降到 2005-2010 年的 24%，又恢复到 29%，抹去了 15 年的进步。

School-based care followed the same V-shape.

以学校为基础的护理遵循同样的 V 形。

Only home-based care, which started with the highest turnover rates, maintained improvements.

只有以最高流动率开始的家庭护理保持了改善。

While this sudden infusion of relief funding provided some temporary aid to worker salaries, it did not change the conditions that drive people out of these jobs, and turnover in school- and center-based settings has returned to where it was three decades ago.

虽然突然注入的救济资金为工人的工资提供了一些临时援助，但它并没有改变人们失业的条件，学校和中心的人员流动率已恢复到三十年前的水平。

Two cautions belong alongside these national findings.

除了这些国家调查结果之外，还有两个警告。

First, a nationwide analysis inevitably smooths over local variation.

首先，全国范围内的分析不可避免地会消除地方差异。

These aggregate trends do not mean that recent state or municipal workforce initiatives are failing.

这些总体趋势并不意味着最近的州或市劳动力计划正在失败。

A growing number of states are experimenting with wage scales, salary supplements, and pay parity with public school employees.

越来越多的州正在尝试工资标准、工资补贴以及与公立学校员工的工资平等。

The District of Columbia’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund (financed by a dedicated income tax increase) and New Mexico ‘s newly funded statewide wage scale are two of the more ambitious examples.

哥伦比亚特区的幼儿教育工作者薪酬公平基金（由专门的所得税增加提供资金）和新墨西哥州新资助的全州工资标准是两个更雄心勃勃的例子。

Second, the American Rescue Plan offers an important lesson.

其次，美国救援计划提供了重要的教训。

Federal funding successfully held worker compensation steady through an unprecedented economic shock, which is crucial for a market that is especially vulnerable to economic downturns .

在前所未有的经济冲击中，联邦资金成功地保持了工人薪酬的稳定，这对于特别容易受到经济衰退影响的市场至关重要。

But when relief expired, pay returned to baseline and turnover climbed, indicating that while public dollars can move wages, temporary policies don’t solve underlying workforce challenges.

但当救济到期后，工资恢复到基线，营业额上升，这表明虽然公共资金可以改变工资，但临时政策并不能解决潜在的劳动力挑战。

The last three-and-a-half decades have seen child care workers become more educated without making child care jobs more competitive.

在过去的三年半里，儿童保育人员的受教育程度提高了，但儿童保育工作的竞争力却没有提高。

Until that changes, the sector will keep asking more of its workforce than it offers them in return.

在这种情况发生改变之前，该行业对劳动力的要求将继续高于其提供的回报。