Remote work changes are being driven by the expectation of 25% occupancy limits at facilities for many months to come. I wish the implications of this fact on childcare were getting 1% of the attention that tech WFH is getting. We are about to enter a new crisis.
I'm not an economist or industry insider, just a parent with a kid who is (was?) supposed to start preschool in a few months. But this is what I see coming that almost nobody is discussing or demanding a plan for...
Private sector preschool daycare in cities looks a lot like restaurants. Low operating margins, low reserves, high fixed costs of rent, and large, likely debt-financed, investments in facilities and equipment. We should expect many to fail without special assistance.
Even those daycares that can continue operating will have to do so at reduced capacity (kids + hours) and with extra expenses for testing, hygiene and cleaning.
Parents in cities already are struggling with year long waitlists and childcare costs that resemble a mortgage payment. We might be about to see capacity drop by 50% or more and costs rise. How are parents of preschool-age kids going to return to work?
We should be planning for a surge in childcare capacity just as we did for health care. Granting temporary regulatory and licensing relief for facilities, adding kid-appropriate bathroom, furniture, etc. and sourcing supplies. I don't hear anyone talking about this.
It will have to be led by the federal government. States are seeing their budgets collapse and can't issue debt, and the private sector isn't going to invest in facilities they know won't be needed in a few months. In-home care can absorb some, but not much in dense cities.
Unfortunately I have little hope that this government will respond. The impacts will be concentrated on women who work outside the home, in bigger cities, in (mostly blue) states that are trying to implement appropriate pandemic control measures.
So I predict the national GOP will give exactly zero fucks about this crisis. But the media, the Biden campaign and everyone else should be raising a ruckus now about the failure to anticipate and plan for this, since it will be hitting hard and dragging down the economy by Nov.
Maybe the NYT can do a profile of some Democratic-voting tech workers who are moving back to MI or OH to access intergenerational childcare.
