Pennsylvania’s childcare teachers are the workforce behind the workforce. When they are in the classroom, parents can go to work with confidence, knowing that their children are safe and learning.
However, childcare teachers are leaving the profession making it difficult for parents to find the care that gets them to work every day. This historic teacher shortage is depleting childcare providers of qualified staff, forcing them to enroll fewer children or even close their doors.
It’s no secret that childcare is expensive, but affordability tells only half the story. The other half of this tale is about the lack of childcare availability.
More than 25,000 Pennsylvania children don’t have childcare because at least 3,000 childcare teaching jobs are unfilled—and that finding comes from a survey of only 17 percent of Pennsylvania’s licensed childcare programs. Surely, the real-world numbers are much higher.
Every community suffers the consequences. The lack of available childcare costs Pennsylvania’s economy $6.65 billion annually in lost wages, productivity, and revenue. When families can’t find childcare, they can’t go to work, and when they can’t work, businesses can’t produce the products and services that make money and create more jobs.
What’s going on? It’s a matter of pay. There is no county in Pennsylvania where childcare teachers can make a livable wage. They earn an average of $15.15 an hour, when they could easily earn $20 an hour or more in retail or fast food—and those are fields that don’t require credentials just to get started.
Those other, higher-paying fields also require less responsibility and fewer specialized skills because caring for children demands trust and intensive knowledge of early childhood development.
In this environment, even the most committed childcare teachers are leaving the field, making the difficult decision to find better-paying jobs so they can support their own families.
Fortunately, Pennsylvania lawmakers hold a solution in their hands. Last year, they cooperated in bipartisan fashion to enhance tax credits for families and employers, easing the financial sting of care that can cost $14,000 a year for infants and toddlers—almost as much as public college tuition.
It’s time to leverage that investment and address the other half of the story. For the 2025-26 state budget, Gov. Shapiro has proposed a critical $55 million investment for a Child Care Teacher Recruitment and Retention Initiative.
This lifeline would stabilize the childcare workforce by providing about $1,000 per educator to Pennsylvania’s subsidized childcare providers. It’s not a complete fix, but it’s an important start and, more importantly, an acknowledgement that we can’t allow this situation to fester.
In fact, Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly agree, in bipartisan fashion, with 83 percent of voters supporting state funding to recruit and retain childcare teachers. This is probably because they have experienced the challenges of finding childcare or have watched their own families and friends struggle.
More than 70 Chambers of Commerce statewide also back this common-sense initiative. In public letters to lawmakers, we note that childcare bottlenecks are preventing us from filling open positions. Without people, we can’t generate the profits that we invest back in jobs and our communities.
Nationwide, 18 states of all political stripes have invested in replenishing the childcare teacher workforce. Without action, Pennsylvania risks falling behind in the race for economic competitiveness.
Pennsylvania lawmakers step up whenever they can support the intertwined interests of families and businesses, and we call on them now to back this initiative. A $55 million investment in childcare teacher recruitment and retention would be a bipartisan, sensible down payment on a more economically vibrant Pennsylvania, where families hold down good jobs and employers find good people.
Submitted by:
Lucine Sihelnik
President & CEO
Greater Reading Chamber Alliance
606 Court St
Reading, PA 19601
(610) 898-7783
AND,
Robert S. Carl, Jr.
President & CEO
Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce
Union Station
1 Progress Circle
Suite 201
Pottsville, PA 17901
(570) 622-1942
