COVID has laid bare a crisis that was decades in the making: Families don’t have the care infrastructure they need to prosper. Around the country and here in Virginia, most families struggle to afford child care and are docked pay when caring for newborns or family with serious illness. Millions are being held back by a lack of affordable, quality care options. But this could all change for Virginia’s families with a proposal in Congress.
The hamster wheel life of a working parent is nothing new. When I had my daughters 20 years ago, I was lucky to have a boss who understood the demands faced by new parents. I even had the option of bringing a younger baby along on the occasional work trip. I remember being shocked to learn that most workplaces had no system for engaging the challenges of workers caring for young children or older relatives. “Winning the boss lottery” is not a system. It’s as random as rolling dice. Little has changed for today’s parents.
Paid leave, affordable child care and greater access to home and community-based health services aren’t just important for Virginia families. These investments are also a boost to our economic recovery, creating jobs and boosting paychecks for workers across the commonwealth.
Business-savvy lawmakers recognize this — starting with Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who as a member of the Senate Budget Committee has been instrumental in championing care investments. Warner recognized the economic benefits before COVID-19 sent many of us spiraling into a care crisis. He has long fought for affordable child care as giving working parents chances to build necessary skills and training.
Warner’s leadership role is critical because the Biden-Harris proposed Build Back Better plan is a realistic program that would cut costs and build prosperity for millions. It would expand access to childcare by investing $425 billion, which a recent analysis from UMass economist Lenore Palladino shows would create and support nearly 19,000 child care and pre-K jobs a year, every year in Virginia alone.
What about families with serious and continuing care issues, such as a newborn in prolonged intensive care or a spouse undergoing chemotherapy? Build Back Better also invests in home and community-based services, allowing workers to earn a living wage, expanding services to older adults and people with disabilities, and allowing family caregivers to return to work or continue working. These investments would create and support 18,770 new jobs in Virginia each year over 10 years and boost the incomes of these workers by more than $700 million a year. Similarly, the proposed guarantee of up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave would raise Virginia workers’ paychecks by another $1.2 billion a year.
Nationwide, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposed care economy investments would create 22.5 million new jobs and $220 billion in economic growth. While thousands of women in the commonwealth have had to leave the workforce during the pandemic because of family responsibilities, 90% of home and community-based care workers in Virginia, and more than 90% of child care workers, are women. Investing in care can help us recover by creating jobs and giving caregivers opportunities to return to work.
And Virginia care workers today earn an average of just $10.14 an hour, barely enough to care for their own families, while they care for so many of us. Raising their paychecks boosts their families and every family in the state.
As we look to recover from the havoc the pandemic has wreaked, it’s clear that investing in care economy policies must be a priority. We simply can’t wait another 20 years to make progress on these issues.
Lisa Guide, an Alexandria resident, is co-founder of the Women Effect Action Fund and an associate director at Rockefeller Family Fund. She is a former deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of the Interior and worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.