To have a truly fair and prosperous economy, we must adopt a plan for universal child care. The COVID-19 economic depression illustrates why the caregiving economy is so essential. 

The New York Times reports that, of the 1.1 million people who left the workforce in August and September, over 800,000 of them were women – including 324,000 Latinas and 58,000 Black women.

Let’s be clear about why this happened: Trickle-down lawmakers REFUSED to pass a second stimulus for everyday people, they failed to provide resources to schools so they could open safely, and they did nothing to make sure that parents had reliable child care outside of school.

Now, with so many people unemployed or underemployed, families are making hard decisions about child care, which frequently costs more than parents can earn in the workplace – especially during a recession. Women, disproportionately of color, bear the brunt of this crisis, being forced to quit their jobs, which deprives our economy of talent and cripples women’s career prospects. 

This is an unfair and ineffectual system. Our economy is weaker and less resilient as a result of women exiting the workforce. We need bold investments that cover the costs of child care and reimagine what universal child care could be because our economy is strongest when all have an opportunity to participate in it.

That’s why, as Joe Biden’s administration makes plans to help our country recover from this recession, striving toward universal child care must be a key part of that plan. We can help strengthen the economy by investing in good-paying jobs in the child care industry and ensuring more women can get back into the workforce. Doing so would put more money into the economy and it would add more productivity to the economy. 

With the Biden transition team already hard at work, we want to see what this community thinks. We need 5,000 people to tell us before midnight: