High Turnover, Low Wages Plague Industry

The child-care industry has always been plagued by the intertwined problems of low wages and high staff turnover, but the problem has gotten even worse in the last 15 years.

“Turnover has really grown,” said Marcy Whitebook, executive director of the Child Care Employee Project in Oakland, a nonprofit group that conducted a landmark staffing study in 1989. “Between the late ‘70s and the time of our study, real wages had dropped about 20%, adjusted for inflation. During that same period of time, turnover had gone from about 15% to about 41%.”

Nonprofit day-care centers had the highest pay and the lowest turnover rate: $6.40 per hour and 30% turnover. Church-run centers and independent for-profits were in the middle. Centers operated by national chains had the lowest pay and the highest turnover rates: $4.10 an hour and a 74% turnover rate.

Recent studies suggest that children do not thrive where turnover is high. Ellen Galinsky, co-president of the Families and Work Institute, said a 1986 study found that “children have a much easier time separating from their mothers when they are cared for by well-known teacher-care-givers in small groups.”

In a 1987 study, said Galinsky, researchers “found that there was a cost to children who changed arrangements frequently: They were less competent in their interactions with materials and other children.”