Low wages, long hours: How Mass. is addressing the childcare workforce crisis
Rosa Hernandez-O'Neil was surrounded by early educators growing up. Her mom ran a childcare center in their home and her sisters all worked in the field. So, at age 16, Hernandez-O’Neil decided she wanted to join the family business as a teacher’s assistant.
And after getting her associate’s degree in baking and pastries from Johnson & Wales University, Hernandez-O’Neil found herself missing something that had been a part of her life forever: children.
“I just see the impact on the children that we're serving,” she said. “I can see the growth and the development of the children that I work with every day.”
At 24, Hernandez-O’Neil achieved a leadership position as program director at Magic Seasons School Age Center in the Berkshires – after eight years in the profession.
“I have always had a love and a drive for working,” she said. “But now working and doing something that I truly love, I think that that's the reason why I show up every day. I show up for my teachers, I show up for my kids.”
Hernandez-O’Neil’s journey from teacher’s assistant to director is one that state officials are working towards making more common. They believe creating a pipeline for career growth in the early education industry will solve the workforce shortage.
Despite the state’s improvements in making childcare more accessible, providers, teachers and researchers say Massachusetts still struggles to recruit and retain early educators as wages remain too low and waitlists for licensure trainings grow.
“If you don't have the supported workforce, you're not going to be able to provide the level of childcare you need for your economy in the immediate term,” Doug Howgate, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President, told Axios in releasing a report on the industry’s workforce issues.
To that end, Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order earlier this year to create the Early Education and Child Care Task Force to address the accessibility of care and the growing issues facing the workforce.
The task force organized listening sessions where families and providers showed up to express their concerns. These sessions were used to help create a report expected to be released by the end of year identifying problems in the industry and recommending solutions, according to a press release.
Low pay, few growth opportunities
Childcare providers are struggling to recruit workers because of low pay and few growth opportunities, according to the MTF report.
Michelle Gonzalez, a lead preschool teacher at Boston Outdoor Preschool Network, said when she was first hired as an early educator in Boston, it was part-time, and she needed to look for another job to support herself.
Gonzalez said when BOPN had a full-time position open up a few months later she jumped on it. But, even as a full-time teacher, an early educator’s salary influences her life choices.
“Even though I make enough, I live in restricted income housing, [and] can't really get ahead,” Gonzalez said. “Eventually, I want to have kids, but at this pay, I can't really think of it. But for now, I'm happy.”
The median hourly wage of an early educator in Massachusetts is $16.95, which is 16% lower than the living wage, $20.07, for one adult with no children, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.
While the percentage difference varies in every state, this is the reality for early educators in every state, according to CSCCE.
The average salary for childcare workers in Massachusetts during the spring was $43,000, per the MTF report. In comparison, the average salary for a childcare worker in the United States is $39,370 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Amy Kershaw, Early Education and Care commissioner, acknowledged that the industry has historically seen low wages. She said it is part of the labor market where wages don’t go up for early education workers as much as they do for others who work with children.
“It is the part of the job market where wages have gone up the most and we haven't seen as much growth within the early education compensation picture,” she said. “So we're losing a lot of staff to other industries that we need to retain in early education.”
Those who leave the early education sectors went on to work as kindergarten teachers, teacher’s assistants, elementary and middle school teachers and home health aides. Nearly all of these professions saw faster wage growth than childcare workers, according to a recent Rappaport Institute report.
Ella Maloney, also a lead preschool teacher at BOPN, previously worked as an early educator in Ohio and said she does feel supported by Massachusetts. Nevertheless, salary is an issue.
“The cost of living here is outrageous, but this is also the most money I've made in my career, but the cost of living plan like that kind of evens out a little bit,” Maloney said.
The average annual cost of living in Massachusetts is $53,860, making it the second most expensive state in the U.S., according to a recent Forbes Advisor report.
Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Lauren Jones said dealing with the low salary of early educators is a priority for the task force.
“Wage quality was certainly shared among individuals that we heard from throughout the listening sessions,” she said. “And [is] something that is top of mind for the task force and the work that we know is critical as we look to build and support again, that affordable, accessible, quality system.”
Jones said the Commonwealth Cares for Children grants are an example of the “early steps” the Healey administration took to stabilize the industry.
“[It] has been beneficial for providers to offer some subsidies they get through the C3 grants to support bonuses and other resources that help to offset wages,” she said.
The C3 grants became permanent in the state’s 2025 fiscal year budget. Massachusetts is the only state in the country to retain this program at the same level the federal government funded it through pandemic-era childcare stabilization grants.
Kershaw said EEC saw an increase in salaries and compensation through the C3 grants.
“Salaries are still too low, and we have additional work to do to really make this a career pathway that our talent can choose and stay in,” she said. “But we've made significant progress.”
The median wage for early care educators falls below 97% of all other occupations in the U.S., according to CSCCE.
Kershaw said her office is working to address the workforce issue by increasing the pipeline through apprenticeship programs, making higher education opportunities available through scholarships and creating a credentialing and career pathway.
Binal Patel, chief program officer at Neighborhood Villages, said addressing low wages and supporting apprenticeships programs are needed to improve the workforce.
“I'm not going to pretend like apprenticeships will solve the workforce crisis,” she said. “Because what we have is not a workforce crisis, but a wage crisis … if we really want to solve it, we're going to have to be talking about wages and salaries too.”
Apprenticeship programs and trainings
The Healey administration announced in May it would invest $3 million to support the early education and workforce pipeline.
Apprenticeship programs provide educators with hands-on training that allows them to gain practical experience in teaching and caring for children while earning a wage. The program connects apprentices with employers, according to the press release.
Jones said the task force is focused on using registered apprenticeship programs to advance the workforce and build the pipeline for early educators.
A sample of childcare centers in Massachusetts reported that 39% of providers experienced a turnover rate of 20% or more, which is the level that the federal government considers “high turnover,” according to a 2024 Boston Foundation report.
Of this sample, 37% respondents who left early education cited low wages as the reason for their leaving. Meanwhile, 20% cited opportunities for growth and 18% reported long hours as their reasons, according to the TBF report.
Healey’s administration announced in September an additional $1.4 million investment in four registered apprenticeship programs to grow the early childhood education workforce.
Community Group in Lawrence, Family Services in Central Massachusetts, United Way of Massachusetts Bay and the SEIU Education and Support Fund were all part of the pilot partnerships.