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Vaccines, jobs and childcare

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Illinois

* Chief Economist at Grant Thornton and adviser to the Federal Reserve…

Vaccine misinformation and the long lags it takes for a vaccine to be effective are additional hurdles to getting workers back to work in a world where more contagious variants are prevalent. These populations also suffered worst in consequences of COVID.

— Diane Swonk (@DianeSwonk) June 2, 2021

* Gov. Pritzker was asked today about the topic of getting people back to work…

I think there are a variety of things. Look, the pandemic is still with us. For those who’ve been vaccinated, the impact, the effect is much less than it was. For many people who have not been vaccinated yet, they need to get vaccinated, and we want to make sure that everybody gets back to work.

But it’s reasonable for people to feel somewhat concerned, as they have for the last 15 months, that getting back to work might be a difficult endeavor for them with the pandemic still upon us. We want people to get vaccinated so that they’ll get back to work. But I just want to point out, that’s one reason that people haven’t gotten back to work, still a concern, a fear, perhaps, that they might get COVID, or that others who enter a location might have COVID. So that’s one thing.

A second is that there are many, many women who, particularly women, who chose not to go back into the workforce yet, in fact, they stepped out of the workforce to take care of their children, or an elderly parent or someone else. And they’re still doing that. And it’s difficult for them, as childcare is still ramping back up, to find the childcare that they need, so that they can go out and get a job. So that’s another portion of people.

And then, I think that there may be people who are on unemployment right now, and who aren’t able to find a job that pays enough for them to pay their bills. Now, there’s, again, those three things are working together, perhaps, to keep some people from seeking out jobs.

But I would say that a lot of people are getting back to work a lot of people. And the fact that there’s so much sort of help wanted out there that help wanted signs are everywhere, is a great sign for the future of the economy of our state. And I’m looking forward, frankly, to people getting back to work as they have been over the number of months since January since people started getting vaccinated.

* Getting childcare ain’t easy for those same three reasons. Also, add in a demand shift…

A Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis shows that the child care workforce is down 15% from pre-pandemic to now, a significant challenge for the 16% of the overall workforce — or 26.8 million people — who depend on child care to work. Roughly 35% of child care workers were laid off in the early stages of the pandemic, says Rasheed Malik, senior policy analyst for Early Childhood Policy for the Center for American Progress (CAP), and only about half of those have returned in the last nine months.

There were hopes that more workers would come back as states prioritized child care workers for early vaccinations, but re-hiring has lagged. Malik believes that in an uncertain economy — with workers unsure they want to return to low-wage jobs and incentives offered in other industries — the staffing dilemma has become worse.

Part of the problem comes from a dramatic demand shift. Winnie, an online platform for finding child care, analyzed requests for care between February 2020 and 2021 among its network of 200,000 locations, and found a striking disparity between suburban and urban locations. Demand for open slots in child care centers had dropped in downtowns and big cities, meaning a big jump in available capacity, while many wealthy suburbs have seen demand for care skyrocket, shrinking capacity. Child care is a slow-moving, highly regulated industry — one can’t simply open up a new location overnight — so even small demand and population shifts disrupt a tenuous equilibrium.

“In suburban markets, families are searching, but new supply doesn’t exist, so it’s harder to get a spot,” says Sara Mauskopf, CEO of Winnie.

The shifts were consistent across the nation’s 10 largest metros; demand for care was down in urban centers and downtowns, and sharply up in more-distant suburban areas. (In the Bay Area, however, there was lower demand in urban and suburban locations across the board.) Take the Chicago metro area; in the city and Evanston, a neighboring suburb to the north with a large student population, the demand-to-supply ratio plunged 236% and 120%, respectively, while in areas further from the city, such as Naperville and Bolingbrook, it grew 57% and 52%.

* Related…

* Stimulus Checks Substantially Reduced Hardship, Study Shows: A new analysis of Census Bureau surveys argues that the two latest rounds of aid significantly improved Americans’ ability to buy food and pay household bills and reduced anxiety and depression, with the largest benefits going to the poorest households and those with children. The analysis offers the fullest look at hardship reduction under the stimulus aid.

* Despite vaccines, nursing homes struggle with outbreaks: COVID-19 vaccines have allowed nursing homes in the U.S. to make dramatic progress since the dark days of the pandemic, but senior care facilities are still experiencing scattered outbreaks that are largely blamed on unvaccinated staff members.

* As some mass COVID-19 vaccination sites close, next stage is doctor’s offices: New rules for storing Pfizer’s vaccine make that shift easier, Lake County’s public health chief explained.

* Illinois planning to offer a lottery for vaccinated residents

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 12:03 pm

Comments

Ironically, I have heard this concern from conservative family members, since the only thing they’re hearing from their media about the vaccine is how bad it is and how people should be allowed not to get it. It was very difficult to convince them that it was free and that there was no hidden catch.

Comment by NIU Grad Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 12:08 pm
I suspect that a not-insignificant number of working families are recalculating the costs & benefits of 1) returning to a crappy job coupled with crappy child care vs 2) no crappy job but no crappy child care.

If we want them to return to work, seems like the thing to do is improve the jobs, the child care, or both.

– MrJM

Comment by @misterjayem Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 12:17 pm
Childcare is a huge issue. Until options for working parents are back to pre-pandemic levels, parents with young kids are going to continue to have issues returning to the office. Working parents need afterschool options and summer camps that offer late pick-up. In Chicago, the summer camps run through schools and the park district (both controlled by the Mayor) only go until 3pm or 4pm this year - that doesn’t work for parents who have to report back to work in person.

Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 12:36 pm
We have struggled to find a child care that has hours that fit with our work schedules, especially as we begin to commute again and need more than just 8 or 9 hours. We’ve been told by our current daycare that it is the state’s rules during the pandemic that forced them to shorten their hours — I would hope that is a policy Pritzker will address if he wants folks back to work.

Comment by anoni Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 12:40 pm
Until children under 12 can be vaccinated, many parents will remain out of the workforce. And I agree with MrJM.

Comment by PublicServant Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 12:42 pm
Good Childcare is as important as good roads and bridges to get people to and from work. Maybe we ought to consider it infrastructure, just like roads and bridges. Wait…

Comment by PublicServant Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 1:24 pm
The child care issue is real. My daughter-in- law works at a nursing home (often at odd hours) and has a 15 month old.

Solutions would be wonderful. But throwing huge amounts of tax payer dollars should not be the ’solution.’ That does not address the fundamental problems but only shifts costs.

Comment by Unconventionalwisdom Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 1:56 pm
The Washington Post article is about how the vaccine is less effective for immunocompromised people. Well in another story water is wet.
It doesn’t say the vaccine is “bad.”

Comment by Da Big Bad Wolf Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 2:05 pm
I understand this works to get reluctant men to a vaccination site https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/vaccinated-covid-strip-clubs/amp

Comment by Cheryl44 Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 2:40 pm
The childcare issue is a tough one, to be sure. My wife and I have two kids and both work, we’re lucky enough that we’re both working remotely - at least for now.

But what will we do when my employer tells me I have to come back to the office? I really don’t know. I don’t know if there will be available daycare spots for one or both kids. Can my wife work remotely and care for two kids at once? She might have to try.

It would be great if we could afford to just have one of us not work and stay home taking care of the kids, but that’s not financially possible for us right now. And that’s the hurdle - I think many families have at least one parent who wouldn’t mind staying at home to care for the kids, but they can’t afford it. Then the irony is that in order to be able to have both parents working, childcare has to be affordable, which currently means that childcare workers get paid poorly.

Either this country needs to find ways to make single-income households more feasible, or to make childcare more affordable while paying childcare workers enough to make a decent wage.

Comment by Techie Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 4:06 pm
=Either this country needs to find ways to make single-income households more feasible, or to make childcare more affordable while paying childcare workers enough to make a decent wage.=

Very true and I feel the same way. But I don’t have any real answers either.

The best I can come up with is making certain that childcare, under age 6, is more fully deductible than at present. In effect, treating it as a ‘cost of business.’

Comment by Unconventionalwisdom Wednesday, Jun 2, 21 @ 6:28 pm
Make it through grade school, and you’ve got me on board, Unconventional.

Comment by PublicServant Thursday, Jun 3, 21 @ 9:10 am