Hacker News Reader

This is hugely due to (mostly) women leaving the workforce to take over childcare due to closed schools.

Then that sounds like a shortage to me. Raising wages isn't going to make the kids disappear.

Raising wages will make daycare a financially reasonable decision again.

Wouldn't the wages for daycare workers need to be raised as well?

So I just looked it up. Unless you make $4.75 an hour or less, you're coming out ahead working and putting your child in daycare. I'm in a ~1 million population US city.

$4.75 is half the state minimum wage, and a fraction of what anywhere near me is starting people out at. No one pays minimum wage any more. Target is paying $15/hr to stock shelves.

How does this work out? Most daycares have a legally required low ratio of staff-to-babies (like 3:1 or so). So just on wages alone you need 1/3 the minimum wage per baby. Add in all the overhead and the fact that maybe you don't want your daycare staff making the absolute minimum wage to watch your children..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com