WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th September, 2021) US Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pressed Congress to increase investment in child care so that families could better afford this and more women could come into the workforce.
"Some estimates suggest our GDP would be five points higher if women participated in the workforce at the same rate as men," Harris said on Wednesday in a live-streamed speech at the Treasury Department, where she joined Yellen for an event on child care.
Harris added that in order for the US economy to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic, "we need to bring child care costs down with a significant public investment."
According to the Treasury Department, the average family with a child under 5 years of age has to spend at least 13 percent of its income toward child care, often at the beginning of the parents' career when their earnings are lower.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 2.2 million fewer women in the labor force in October 2020 than there were in October 2019. The decrease was partly due to the pandemic's toll on working mothers that added to other challenges such as pay disparity and expensive childcare is an economic downturn that hit women employees harder than men.
President Joe Biden's ambitious $3.5 trillion "Build Back Better" agenda for the United States includes overhauls to Federal health care, education and safety net programs. The Biden administration has said it plans to raise tax rates for companies and the richest Americans to fund the spending plan.
"It's past time that we treat child care as what it is - an element whose contribution to economic growth is as essential as infrastructure or energy," Yellen said in a statement released ahead of Wednesday's event.
Yellen also lamented that child care workers in the United States were underpaid.
"It doesn't work at all," she said later when appearing at the event with Harris. "Those who provide child care aren't paid well and those who need it can't afford it."
US child care workers are paid on average $12.88 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
An estimated 40 percent of day care centers in the United States had to permanently close during the measures taken to address the coronavirus pandemic. Some of the workers there quit during the pandemic and are averse to returning due to risks associated with the new variant of the COVID-19. Moreover, service industry jobs offering $15 an hour are having trouble attracting workers, labor market analysts say.
