Friday's jobs report underscores the severity of America's child care crisis

The summary

• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an estimated 69,000 workers were absent from work in August due to child care issues, a record high for the month and a continuation of a post-pandemic trend.

• This week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, discussed the growing child care crisis, with Vance providing more details.

• In February, Vice President Kamala Harris announced steps to reduce the cost of child care through the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program by reducing payments for participating families.

• Due to the pandemic, many parents are no longer able to find and/or pay for childcare options.

Friday's employment report showed unmistakable signs of a weakening labor market.

Hidden in the report was another warning about an exploding problem that is currently being hotly debated in the run-up to the November elections.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of Americans who missed work because of child care issues reached its highest level ever in August. Although the dataset shows large monthly fluctuations and is largely trending downward, it is still well above pre-pandemic highs.

At the same time, employment in child care is not nearly enough to meet demand, says Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, who highlighted that statistic in a commentary following Friday's jobs report.

“There is a market failure,” Pollak said in a follow-up interview with NBC News.

The problem stems largely from the devastation caused by the pandemic, which led to the closure of many child care facilities, Pollak said. Even after government-mandated closures were lifted, many of those facilities were unable to financially recover from the impact of the closure or were unable to find or afford replacement staff.

According to a recent Bank of America study, consumer spending on child care has increased by at least 32% since 2019.

At the same time, more and more families are choosing to homeschool their children, either voluntarily or out of necessity, for example due to inadequate teaching staff. According to Pollak, this creates a vicious cycle in which schools must pool their resources even further, which in turn leaves other families with fewer financial or social support options with difficult childcare choices.

Pollak pointed to a situation in her own school district where a teacher shortage had led to a need for a number of substitute teachers.

“Parents are outraged that they have to constantly use different substitute teachers,” she said. Without this stability and appropriate teacher ratios, many parents are “looking for ways out.”

Another 150,000 reported working part-time due to child care issues, an all-time record for August and the third-highest number ever recorded, according to the BLS.

The cost of child care could prove to be a key issue for voters in November, especially in the crucial swing states that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump need to win the election.

Friday's data comes shortly after Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, both addressed the issue of child care.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Trump said the revenue from his plan to impose tariffs on goods entering the United States would be so high that the cost of child care would no longer be a problem for Americans. Economists have questioned both the likelihood and success of uniform tariffs.

Vance paints a more detailed picture of how child care issues could be addressed, arguing that current policies favor wealthier families where both parents work voluntarily. On X, he shared a 2021 poll showing that college-educated parents are more likely to support both parents working while relying entirely on child care compared to parents without college degrees.

However, the same graph also showed that both educated and less educated parents overall favor one parent staying at home.

Still, Vance called universal child care “a massive subsidy of the lifestyle preferences of the wealthy over the preferences of the middle and working classes.”

This week, Vance suggested to far-right commentator Charlie Kirk that the government should encourage family members to help with child care, repeating his previous call for grandparents or stay-at-home dads to receive a “credit” or “check” for child care. However, he did not provide details on how such a plan would work.

In a follow-up post on X on Thursday, Vance explained that current policies at the federal and state levels “force” certain family models.

“If you open up kinship and other options to families, you will relieve some of the pressure on the daycare system in this country,” he said.

He also criticized Harris' approach, which he said was simply to solve the problem with more money.

“You can't just write a check if there are no additional providers,” Vance wrote, adding that he supports lifting health and safety licensing restrictions that could hinder the opening of alternative child care options such as churches.

In February, Harris announced steps to reduce the cost of child care through the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program, offering greater incentives to states that administer the program to reduce payments for participating families.

Both Vance and Harris have advocated increasing the child tax credit. Harris's running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, passed the most generous child tax credit in the country earlier this year, albeit with a somewhat narrow scope.

In a recent survey of parents of young children in Georgia, 8 in 10 respondents said inadequate child care interferes with their ability to work, while nearly 45% said child care problems have caused one partner to turn down a job altogether. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the annual cost of child care in Georgia—$8,530 for toddlers and $7,306 for four-year-olds—even exceeds the average college tuition in the state.

Similar problems are plaguing Pennsylvania residents. Child care advocates say nearly 10% of the state's daycare centers or home-based programs have closed since the pandemic. Even the state's subsidized child care program has seen enrollment drop, with more than 11,000 fewer children participating, according to budget figures.

Vance responded to Hannah Anderson, an author and Bible teacher, in his last message on X. In her first series of posts referring to Vance's response to Kirk, she said Vance “inaccurately defines the problems facing families” and therefore “offers solutions that don't make sense.”

“Most people would naturally choose to have their children cared for in the family if that is possible,” Anderson said. “If they need to use non-family child care, they have most likely already tried that option.”

She added that economic forces and the lack of worker power have limited Americans' choices.

“Especially in the working class, higher living costs and limited workers' rights mean that family members cannot provide for their children because they are at the mercy of their employers,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, corporate interests and family interests often conflict.”