The impact of Black people in early care and education cannot be overstated. Black women, in particular, have played a crucial role in American society, caring for multiple generations of children.

Recent reports indicate that 95 percent of child care workers are female. And although Black people make up only 13 percent of the total U.S. workforce, 18 percent of U.S. child care workers are Black.

Early education and child care represent the most racially diverse and lowest-paid sector of the teaching workforce. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that child care workers make an average of $14.22 an hour. That’s just $29,570 a year. And Black child care educators earn an average of 78 cents less per hour than their white counterparts.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, elected officials praised child care educators for their efforts to keep working and keep the economy going: Without them, parents could not have returned to work. Federal child care stabilization grants also played a pivotal role, keeping these programs open during the pandemic by providing subsidies to child care centers and to families.

Yet, the same officials who funded those grants don’t seem willing to extend that support. Now that the $52 billion pandemic-era funding has expired, many educators and families wonder about the future.

An estimated 70,000 child care programs could close in the U.S. because of the lost federal money, impacting nearly 3.2 million children.

America’s lack of ongoing investment in child care at the national and local levels will disproportionately hurt Black educators, children and families. Pre-pandemic, there was already limited availability of affordable options; new closures will deepen the challenges faced by parents in securing reliable and accessible care for their children.

Recently, 49 percent of parents who responded to a survey said they plan to spend about $18,000 on child care in 2024, while 23 percent will spend more than $36,000. Black median-income households generally spend a quarter of annual pay ($46,774) on child care for one child; very-low-income Black households can spend nearly half. White median-income households devote 15 percent of pay ($75,412) to child care.

I have heard many Black educators, parents, and advocates express frustration at the way public officials have overlooked early care and education, especially home-based child care, whose owners typically operate on small margins and are particularly vulnerable to funding losses.

Millions of young children spend time in home-based child care, also known as family child care (FCC). Yet, there were 10,000 fewer family child care programs in the United States in 2022 than in 2019. This is in addition to the drop of more than 90,000 (42 percent) licensed family child care homes between 2005 and 2017.

Read the full article about Black women and the childcare industry by Erica Phillips at The Hechinger Report .