7. Support pay equity to create a fair labor market
Equal pay ensures that workers are paid fairly. In 2019, women working full time, year-round earned just 82 cents for every $1 earned by their male counterparts. This pay gap is even worse for women of color: For every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men in 2019, Black women earned 63 cents, Native women earned 60 cents, and Latinas earned 55 cents. And while Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women, on average, earned 85 percent of what white, non-Hispanic men earned, there were much wider gaps for many AAPI sub-populations. Disabled women also struggle with a pay gap, receiving 80 cents for every dollar earned by men with disabilities. If women in this country received equal pay to men, poverty for working women would be reduced by half and $512.6 billion would be added to the economy through additional wages.
What’s more, equal pay is essential to helping workers attain the stability and savings necessary to weather current and future crises. The pandemic has stalled women’s economic progress, as a lack of access to child care and paid leave, coupled with mass job losses, has forced many women out of the workforce entirely, exacerbating the gender wage gap. For example, mothers of young children have lost jobs at three times the rate of fathers during the crisis. This is on top of ever-present compounding factors such as bias and discrimination that may deflate women’s earnings.
Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act would enhance existing equal pay protections, further combat discriminatory practices, and better hold employers accountable for pay discrimination. Pandemic or not, securing equal pay has always been essential to the economic security of women and families.
For more information on pay equity, see “Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap” and “When Women Lose All the Jobs: Essential Actions for a Gender-Equitable Recovery.”
8. Invest in affordable, high-quality child care and early childhood education
More than half of all Americans live in a child care desert, where child care shortages lead to waiting lists, job disruptions, and fewer mothers in the paid labor force. Child care in the United States is prohibitively expensive, with infant and toddler care often costing between $800 and $1,230 a month. While there are subsidies for low-income families, in most states, they reach fewer than 1 in 10 eligible children under the age of 6. As a result, low-income families can spend more than one-third of their income on child care just to be able to work.
Not surprisingly, the pandemic has eviscerated child care across the United States. About 700,000 parents left the workforce in 2020 to care for young children who were not able to go to school or have access to child care. Since then, only half of the nearly 400,000 child care jobs lost at the start of the pandemic have returned, leading to a 144 percent increase in the number of parents who have missed work to care for children compared with 2019.
The $39 billion for subsidized child care that was already included in the American Rescue Plan will help providers recover from a year of unprecedented revenue losses, but additional funding is needed to expand these services to everyone who needs them. The American Families Plan would make significant investments in universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, which would help more struggling families obtain the child care they need to work, better meeting their families’ basic needs and building future economic stability. The plan would also cap child care costs for low- and moderate-income families at 7 percent of their income, making it far more affordable and manageable as they juggle other needs.
Another bill currently introduced in Congress, the Child Care for Working Families Act (CCWFA), would ensure free or affordable child care for 76 percent of working families with children under the age of 6, expanding quality care for millions of families. As Congress deliberates future funding, it must invest in affordable, high-quality child care and early education, providing parents with the means to foster family security and healthy child development.
For more information on child care and early childhood education, see “Understanding the True Cost of Child Care for Infants and Toddlers,” “Working Families Are Spending Big Money on Child Care,” and “Saving Child Care Means Preserving Jobs and Supporting Working Families and Small Businesses.”