To grow Montana’s economy, we must invest in child care

By Erin Foley

If you ask working parents in Montana what their biggest challenge is, they’ll usually tell you the same thing: it’s the increasing difficulty they face in finding childcare that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg.

For years now families across the state have been struggling to fill this critical gap and make sure their kids are safely taken care of while the parents are at work. A lack of workers in the industry, low wages, and little state support have combined to create a crisis that impacts working families across our entire state.

The median wage for child care workers in Montana was $13.99 per hour in 2023, or around $30,000 per year, putting it in the bottom five percent of all occupations.. These low wages make it difficult to recruit and retain a child care workforce, and wildly undervalue the hardworking child care providers who support Montana families and keep our economy up and running.

Meanwhile, policy choices that have kept wages low and worsened labor shortages mean few options and long waitlists for families seeking to sign their kids up for care. Nationally, the child care sector is still down about 39,400 workers compared with pre-pandemic, which has caused prices to skyrocket and made finding care working families can actually afford next to impossible.

In Montana average yearly child care costs for a 4-year-old is $11,418, or $952 each month. Infant care is even pricier - the average annual cost of infant care in Montana is $12,778, or $1,065 per month. To put it in perspective, a minimum wage worker in Montana would need to work full time for 30 weeks, or from January to July, just to pay for child care for one infant. A median child care worker in Montana meanwhile would have to spend 43 percent of their earnings to put their own child in infant care.

For many families, spending that much money on child care is unthinkable - and most families don’t have just one kid who needs to be looked after. 

The implications of the challenges facing child care are vast. Parents of young kids who need care are forced to make difficult decisions, and too often end up deciding to forgo working and drop out of the workforce altogether. Frequently mothers take on this burden, which drives down lifetime earnings and contributes to the stubborn gap in wages that continues to plague women.

If we want to grow Montana’s job market and make sure there are workers to fill those jobs, we must address this crisis. The state has taken some small steps in the right direction, including the Best Beginnings program which helps families who need it afford care through a co-pay system based on income.

But we must do more to get more workers into the industry. Other states have implemented programs that distribute monthly grants to child care providers who use the funding to support staff wages and benefits, leading to salary hikes of $2 an hour in Minnesota and $2.25 per hour in Illinois.

Montana could also expand eligibility and funding for the Best Beginnings program to help more families access those critical benefits, which would significantly help providers attract and retain qualified staff. 

Implementing these policies will get more workers on the job and keep them there longer, which means more workers can be freed up to enter the workforce in other industries as well. More workers would lead to a stronger, more inclusive economy, and cheaper childcare costs would help working families afford other essentials like gas, rent, and groceries.

It’s long past time we tackle this challenge, because every family deserves to be able to afford the care their children need.

Erin Foley is Secretary Treasurer of Teamsters Local 2 and President of the Montana AFL-CIO

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