Child care and early education (CCEE) educators typically have low levels of compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. There are also high rates of job turnover, which can strain remaining educators and decrease the quality of…

Despite the crucial role early educators play in young children's development, the field has always struggled with poor compensation and inadequate support (McLean et al., 2021). The persistent undervaluation of the ECE sector and the labor provided by the nearly all-female workforce can be traced back to its racist roots, when enslaved Black…

The Child Care and Early Education Research Connections collection catalogs resources that researchers, policymakers, and other professionals find and use for child care and early education research. The items outlined in this resource list examine the retention and well-being of the early care and education (ECE) workforce. They were published…

Early care and education (ECE) is complex, highly skilled, emotionally and physically demanding work for which educators deserve to be adequately rewarded. California's early educators often exceed the minimum educational requirements for their jobs. More than one half of both center- and home-based educators hold an associate degree or higher…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented public health emergency that crippled the child care market in the United States. This crisis highlighted the essential role of the early care and education (ECE) workforce in the nation's economic stability and growth. The pandemic's disproportionate effect on Black, Hispanic, and Native American…

This report asserts that every child--regardless of race, income, or opportunity--should have consistent access to high-quality learning experiences from birth and provides a roadmap toward change at scale, including the development of residency programs and improved compensation for the infant/toddler workforce.

In January 2017 Washington State Department of Early Learning (DEL) surveyed child care centers and family homes on the impact of Initiative 1433 ("I-1433") raising Washington's minimum wage. The data collected indicates that providers were broadly impacted by the initiative. For family home providers, 46% reported that they had paid…

In the 2017-2019 operating budget, the Legislature appropriated $5,000 to create a child care workforce development technical workgroup (Workgroup) and directed the Department of Early Learning (now the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, or DCYF) to convene a group consisting of 13 stakeholders to develop recommendations for the…

In the past decade, various stakeholders in the public and private sectors in Hawai'i have sought to increase the state's investment in child care and early learning programs. A new Executive Office of Early Learning was established in June 2012 to build a statewide early childhood development and learning system. The state also established a…

Most early educators are paid less than $15 per hour, and many of them report high levels of economic insecurity evidenced by their worry about meeting monthly family expenses or paying for bare necessities such as food and housing. Coupled with low wages, few early educators can expect to work in settings that provide basic professional supports…

The COVID-19 pandemic created a major upheaval to an already fragile early care and education (ECE) system. As a result of the pandemic, families face additional challenges accessing care and child care providers are experiencing greater financial difficulties and struggling to keep their programs open. The pandemic has also exacerbated the…

Many pre-K teachers across the nation are expected to earn a bachelor's degree, similar to their peers teaching older children. Yet salaries and benefits remain consistently lower for pre-K teachers than for elementary school teachers. Increasingly, compensation parity is perceived as an achievable policy goal rather than a lofty ideal, yet there…

Despite increasing attention being paid to early childhood services as the foundation for lifelong learning, one issue seems to be consistently ignored--staff wages. The authors argue that this constitutes ongoing exploitation of childcare staff, and that this exploitation is a result of gendered and classed discourses around caring labour. As…

The ECE workforce experiences high levels of stress, partly because they have low incomes and limited access to professional and personal supports for their own well-being. In addition, the ECE workforce experiences sociopolitical stressors (i.e., stressors that arise from political legislation or from political leaders' threatening rhetoric).…

Enactment of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) in 2015 introduced opportunities to use federal funds to strengthen the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce as a means of better meeting the needs of the growing and increasingly diverse young child population. Children under the age of 5 who have at least one parent or…