Montclair, NJ –– Today, Representative Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11) joined Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Phil Murphy in Montclair to highlight the critical need to address childcare for working parents and the broad economic benefits of investment into childcare.
Vice President Harris and Rep. Sherrill toured the Ben Samuels Children's Center at Montclair State University. They then held a roundtable with childcare providers and working parents from across the region to discuss the difficulty that the current childcare crisis has created for families. The roundtable participants addressed the unique challenges that have arisen as a result of the pandemic, the need for additional childcare resources, the overwhelming cost burden facing families, and the economic benefits addressing this crisis would have across New Jersey and the nation.
"I'm grateful Vice President Harris came here to NJ-11 today to discuss the work I've done to address the childcare crisis America's families are facing, to highlight the critical need to invest in our nation's childcare system, and the overwhelming benefit addressing this problem will have for our entire economy," said Rep. Sherrill. "As a working mom of four kids, this is an issue that's personal to me. We know the pandemic drove more than a million parents out of the workforce and strained a childcare system that was already unaffordable and unavailable to too many families. Making the right investments to fully address the childcare crisis is projected to address the workforce shortage by filling 1.6 million jobs and boosting GDP by more than $360 billion. We have an opportunity to make those key investments, and I appreciate that Vice President Harris and the White House share this critical priority."
"In New Jersey, the average family spends 15 percent of their income on childcare. One of the issues that the President and I have been working on with the support of Congress is to say, ‘No one should spend more than 5 to 7 percent of their income on childcare,' especially when you look at the other obligations that families have, such as putting food on the table and paying rent," said Vice President Harris. "Nearly half of New Jersey lives in childcare deserts. And we are seeing across the country these numbers."
Prior to the pandemic, the state of childcare was already reaching crisis levels. Using data from 19 states and DC, the Center for American Progress found that there were over four children under age 3 for every licensed care spot in 2018. The pandemic has caused a wave of childcare center shutdowns that have greatly worsened this shortage, making childcare even more inaccessible for working families. In New Jersey, infant care for one child cost almost 15% of the median family's income before the pandemic, while care for two children cost upwards of 25% of their income. During the pandemic, almost 1.8 million women dropped out of the workforce, many of them due to childcare and school closures.
During the first wave of COVID-19 cases last April, labor force participation fell by 3.2 percentage points among married mothers with a child under age six and by 4.3 percentage points among married mothers with a child ages six to 12. These decreases, if sustained, will represent a monumental erosion of the progress America has made over the past three decades in helping women to enter the workforce. A five percent decline in womens' labor force participation would undo the past 25 years of progress.
Throughout the pandemic, Rep. Sherrill has worked to address the growing child care crisis, supporting legislation such as the Child Care is Essential Act (H.R. 7027) and the Child Care for Economic Recovery Act (H.R. 7327). She continues to work with leadership and the White House to ensure that all families benefit from these childcare provisions and the childcare crisis is fully addressed.
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