Over the past several years, I have worked with Maine organizations that advocate for policies and investments to strengthen and grow Maine’s economy, including efforts aiming to remove barriers to workforce participation. One major workforce obstacle is child care.
Many parents and guardians, including my own friends and colleagues, have left jobs or not gone back to work after having children because of Maine’s child care crisis. Child care costs are high, Maine has a shortage of child care programs, and these programs struggle with hiring in part due to low wages for child care workers.
In 2022 and 2023, to help address the child care crisis, Maine approved and funded modest stipends for child care workers. Yet the recently proposed state budget would significantly cut those stipends, reducing pay for child care workers whose wages are already in the lowest three percentile.
Cutting recent pay gains for “the workforce behind the workforce” would make it harder for child care programs to find and keep workers, and would reduce the availability of programs, raise barriers for working families with young children, make it harder for Maine employers and the economy to grow and lower the return on investment in child care.
While I appreciate the need to tighten state budget growth, child care funding is too important an investment in families, employers and Maine’s economy and future to cut. I hope all Maine State legislators prioritize continued support for child care and the child care workforce.
Jennifer Webber
Biddeford
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