This story about child care wages was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit,independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger’s early childhood newsletter. Caring for children during their first few years is a complex and critical job: A child’sbrain 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 anddressing room attendants. That’s a major finding of one of two new reports on the dismal treatment of child careworkers. Together, the reports offer a distressing picture of how child care staff arefaring economically, including the troubling changes low wages have caused to theworkforce. Early childhood workers nationally earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, resulting inpoverty-level earnings for 13 percent of such educators, according to the first report, theEarly Childhood Workforce Index 2024. Released earlier this month by the Center forthe Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, the annualreport also found: 43 percent of families of early educators rely on public assistance likefood stamps and Medicaid. Pay inequity exists within these low wages: Black early childhoodeducators earn about $8,000 less per year than their white peers. Thesame pay gap exists between early educators who work with infants andtoddlers and those who work with preschoolers, who have moreopportunities to work in school districts that pay higher wages. Wages for early educators are rising more slowly than wages in otherindustries, including fast food and retail. In part due to these conditions, the industry is losing some of its highest-educatedworkers, according to a second new report, by Chris M. Herbst, a professor at ArizonaState University’s School of Public Affairs. That study compares the pay of child careworkers with that of workers in other lower-income professions, including cooks andretail workers; it finds child care workers are the tenth lowest-paid occupation out ofaround 750 in the economy. The report also looks at the ‘relative quality’ of child carestaff, as defined by math and literacy scores and education level. Higher-educatedworkers, Herbst suggests, are being siphoned off by higher-paying jobs. That’s led to a “bit of a death spiral” in terms of how child care work is perceived, andcontributes to the persistent low wages, he said in an interview. Some additionalfindings from Herbst’s study: Higher-educated women increasingly find employment in the child careindustry to be less attractive. The share of workers in the child careindustry with a bachelor’s degree barely budged over the past fewdecades, increasing by only 0.3 percent. In contrast, the share of those inthe industry who have 12 years of schooling but no high school degree,quadrupled. Median numeracy and literacy scores for female child care workers(who are the majority of the industry staff) fall at the 35th and 36thpercentiles respectively, compared to all female workers. Improving thesescores is important, Herbst says, considering the importance of educationin the early years, when children experience rapid brain development. This doesn’t mean child care staff with lower education levels can’t be good earlyeducators. Patience, communication skills and a commitment to working with youngchildren also matter greatly, Herbst writes. However, higher education levels may meanstaff have a stronger background not only in English and math but also in topics likebehavior modification and special education, which are sometimes left out ofcertification programs for child care teachers. You can read Herbst’s full report here, and the 2024 workforce index here. The post 2 out of 5 child care teachers make so little they need public assistance to support their families appeared first on Mississippi Today.