Suggested by Claire Zhang over 3 years ago

From recent BCG DEI report:

We forecast that the US will lose about $290 billion a year in GDP in 2030 and beyond if we fail to fix two critical care-economy dynamics: (1) the lack of available workers to fill a dramatically increasing number of these hands-on jobs, and (2) the departure of productive employees from the paid labor force to take on unpaid-care duties, whether they want to or not. That economic loss is equivalent to losing half of the annual GDP growth projected from 2022–2023.1 Or, put another way, it is more than the annual revenue of Alphabet, the second-biggest US technology company.

There is no single solution—building a resilient, lasting system requires input and action from all sectors. Fixing the US’s broken care economy means building a society that protects the health and dignity of our elderly, nurtures and educates our children, secures the well-being of our adults, and ensures the equity of our workplaces.

The care crisis is tied to the market for hourly labor—significantly, low-wage labor—and, therefore, intersects with the postpandemic “great re-enrollment” and a US unemployment rate hovering below 4%. About 1.8 million critical-care jobs, including nursing assistants, home health aides and childcare workers, are open, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the demand for these jobs is poised to grow in the next ten years, well beyond these vacancies. However, these roles generally pay less than $18 an hour and offer poor benefits. Workers are required to be onsite, with inflexible hours and unexpected overtime. Training is inadequate; turnover is high. It’s no wonder these positions are starved for applicants.

Ample openings in industries that compete for the same workers, such as retail and hospitality, exacerbate the problem, and are already drawing away current care-economy employees with better pay, perks, and easier duties. That’s evident in the numbers: as of July, pandemic-related job losses across the broader economy had largely recovered, but job totals in child-care services were still 8% short of prepandemic levels, according to the Center for American Progress.2 About a third of US daycare centers closed or reduced capacity by more than 50% in the last two years because of a lack of workers. -- https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/solving-the-care-crisis