Lack of affordable childcare for workers costs Florida businesses $4.5 billion per year
Maria Vasquez was reluctant to step away from teaching after giving birth to her daughter, Selah, three years ago. But, financially, she struggled to justify working.
“Comparing the cost of what I was going to make to the cost of daycare, I would’ve just worked to pay for daycare,” she said. At that point, staying home just made more sense.
Vasquez’s salary would have covered the cost of daycare, between $700 and $1,100 a month, in her town, Miami Lakes. But, seeing how little she’d have left over, Maria decided to watch Selah herself while her husband worked.
If she had more affordable childcare options, Vasquez said she would’ve stayed in the classroom with her fifth- and sixth-grade students. “I didn’t want to stop working,” she said.
At the time of Selah’s birth, Vasquez and her husband earned a combined $89,000, supporting themselves and their three older children, whose ages span 10 to 21.
The couple didn’t qualify for childcare benefits.
To get subsidized childcare through Florida’s federally funded School Readiness Program, families cannot earn more than 150% of the federal poverty line — just $62,940 for a household the size of Vasquez’s.
Boxed out of state benefits but squeezed by high daycare prices and wages that struggle to keep pace, Vasquez, like many Florida parents, took childcare into her own hands.
“It felt unfair,” she said, “to work so hard, and to need the help but not get it.”
Nearly 30% of Florida parents have seen childcare issues disrupt their employment, according to a 2023 Florida Chamber Foundation study. A quarter of parents cut back on their working hours, while one in six, like Vasquez, leave their jobs entirely — all to provide childcare to their kids.
And it’s not just families that are feeling the effects of childcare inaccessibility. Businesses are starting to feel it as well.
“There’s no question there’s not enough quality childcare,” said Alfred Sanchez, president of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. “Employers see the impact of a lack of childcare in productivity. We’re having a hard time filling jobs.”
Desks are empty, said Sanchez, “because people can’t afford to work.”
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Across Florida, parents and their employers are struggling to cope with the increasingly costly crisis of childcare affordability.
The problem’s price tag? Roughly $5.4 billion, estimates Kyle Baltuch, executive vice president of the Florida Chamber Foundation, the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s research arm. And that’s a conservative projection, he said.
Businesses foot the bulk of that bill. Employee turnover and absentee costs — when parents can’t make it to work because of childcare issues — cost Florida businesses nearly $4.5 billion annually.
When parents can’t work, they can’t spend, further harming businesses and draining nearly $1 billion each year from the state’s potential tax revenue, said Baltuch.
Low- and middle-income families are disproportionately affected. When sending a single child to daycare costs nearly 15% of a family’s household income, said Baltuch, “it’s unsustainable.” Factor in more than one child under the age of 6, and it’s totally unworkable, he said.
The solutions?
From the employers’ side of the equation, said Sanchez, more hybrid or virtual work options could give families with young children some breathing room. But, he added, with COVID in the rearview mirror, the work environment has become less flexible.
“More companies are going back to full-time, in-person work,” said Sanchez, meaning more and more workers have to be in person five days a week.
Andrea Cid is bucking that trend. The owner of Concept II Cosmetics, a bath and body product manufacturer based in Doral, Cid has a 25-person staff of office workers, factory line employees and chemists, 80% of whom are women.
“We found out early on that we have to be flexible,” said Cid, recognizing that childcare duties often fall on women.
Office staff can work hybrid or virtually, she said. For factory workers, who need to be there in person, Cid helps her teams coordinate their work schedules around employees’ family obligations. Most importantly, stressed Cid, employees are cross-trained whenever possible, making it easier to plug holes when someone is absent.
As she spoke, Madelaine Escobar Duran, a chemist at Concept II, walked into the office with her 5-year-old daughter Emily in tow. It was around 4 p.m., and Madeleine had just picked up Emily from pre-K.
“I feel so fortunate that I don’t have to stress about after-school care,” said Escobar, adding, “I don’t have any family here in Miami to leave [Emily] with,” so her flexible work environment makes life much easier and much more affordable.
While maintaining flexibility is a challenge, Cid emphasized that it has helped Concept II with recruitment and, critically, with retention.
At the state level, some Florida legislators, like Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud, who represents much of south Miami-Dade, have pushed to expand eligibility for childcare benefits to include struggling families that earn more than the current cutoff.
As Vasquez, the fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, found out, School Readiness, the state’s principal childcare assistance program, applies only to households earning less than 150% of the federal poverty line. For a three-person household, that’s less than $38,730. Two parents earning Florida’s current minimum wage — $13 per hour — wouldn’t qualify.
Though she recognizes it as a worthy investment, Calatayud noted that opposition from fellow lawmakers to the cost of broadening access to School Readiness — $100 million annually from the state’s budget — still needs to be overcome.
Sanchez, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce president, agrees with the need to expand access to childcare, stressing it as necessary for the health of Florida’s economy.
“It’s an investment in productivity today and in the workforce of tomorrow,” he said.
In the meantime, local service providers are working to fill in gaps where they can.
In Miami-Dade County, the Children’s Trust, a property-tax-funded children’s advocacy organization, introduced the Families Forward program in 2018.
Designed to help families that earn between 150% and 300% of the federal poverty line — $38,730 to $77,460 for a family of three — Families Forward currently subsidizes childcare for 1,435 children, working with Miami’s Early Learning Coalition to pay students’ tuition directly to daycare centers. But the program’s waitlist — currently 1,749 children — speaks to the scope of local families’ need for more affordable childcare.
“There will never be enough local dollars to compensate for the fact that working families cannot qualify for the state program,” the Children’s Trust said in a written statement. “The bigger solution must be a shift in state policy,” added James Haj, the Trust’s president.
Until then, parents do what they can, like leaning on family members, to make childcare work. Vasquez was only able to return to work full-time last year, once her mother-in-law retired and agreed to watch her daughter during the day.
But Vasquez doesn’t see that as a sufficient daycare replacement for Selah, whose academic and social development she thinks would benefit greatly from going to more organized early childhood education.
“If money weren’t an issue,” Vasquez hypothesized, “I’d send Selah to daycare.”
This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O’Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
This story was originally published November 8, 2024 at 1:45 PM.
