The availability of care and care workers is integral to maximizing workforce participation and building a healthy, resilient economy. A continuum of care for children, sick loved ones, older adults, people with disabilities, and workers themselves is and always has been vital to sustain families, protect jobs, and drive economic growth. But the pandemic has revealed how decades of underinvestment in care—if not ignoring the need entirely—has hurt families and cost millions of women their jobs. In order to equitably rebuild from the pandemic, policymakers must learn from the past year and prioritize robust investments in care as essential infrastructure that makes all work possible. Without measures to fill caregiving gaps, people who have been harmed the most by the economic crisis will continue to pay the price. Policymakers must prioritize quality, affordable child care and early education; permanent, national paid family and medical leave and paid sick leave; home- and community-based services; and higher wages and improved benefits and protections for care workers and early educators.
President Biden’s Home Care Proposal Would Create Massive Job Growth in Every State
A bold investment in the care economy would help aging Americans and people with disabilities live at home affordably and create hundreds of thousands of good-paying home care jobs, addressing the industry’s severe job shortage.
These Interconnected Policies Would Sustain Families, Support Women, and Grow the Economy
Together, the policies included in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda would propel families’ and the country’s economic security by prioritizing child care, the child tax credit, paid family and medical leave, and good jobs that get Americans back to work.
How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward
The collapse of the child care sector and drastic reductions in school supervision hours as a result of COVID-19 could drive millions of mothers out of the paid workforce. Inaction could cost billions, undermine family economic security, and set gender equity back a generation.
Policymakers must consider lessons learned from the emergency paid leave laws passed in response to the coronavirus pandemic in order to design national, permanent paid leave policies that ensure racial, gender, and economic equity and meet the needs of families.
Investing in Home and Community-Based Care During the Coronavirus Pandemic and Future Disasters
The 21st anniversary of the Olmstead v. L.C. Supreme Court decision, which is occurring in the midst of a pandemic, is the perfect time to discuss the importance of home and community-based care.
The Rising Cost of Inaction on Work-Family Policies
Continued inaction from Congress on work-family policies, including the current lack of access to affordable child care and comprehensive paid family and medical leave, costs workers $31.9 billion in lost wages annually.
Working mothers are important drivers of three essential industries—elementary and secondary education, hospitals, and food services—yet cannot afford child care for their own children.
State Options for Making Wise Investments in the Direct Care Workforce
Policymakers must invest in strengthening the direct care workforce in order to improve the quality of care delivered to patients and to achieve better value for every dollar spent on long-term services and supports.
