this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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Work Reform
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Daycare is a crazy one. Insanely expensive, yet the workers are damn near indentured servants.
It's honestly a major contributor to the labor shortage. For anyone with a decent job, it's significantly cheaper for the spouse to just stay home until the kids are old enough to take care of themselves.
We started by doing dual income as an optional lifestyle and the rich saw that they could make more money that way, and then it became mandatory.
Don't let the media force you to twist your words-- it is not a labor shortage, but a wage and cost of living crisis.
"Nobody wants to work anymore" == "I pay so shitty wages that no one can even afford to come work for me."
I've run into dozens of people who are complaining about how they have applied to literally everything and never heard back or get rejected for things like gas station cashier and yet those places always put up the help wanted signs. Shortage seems like a fabrication when these places hire nobody and keep the ad up
When I.T and nurses are complaining that they keep getting ghosted and can't find work? That feels like a major economic failure signal to me. It's freaking mad.
nurses, usually shouldnt have a problem, i think they are desperate enough to fill spots. but its likely things like mandatory hours or whatever is required.
It's still the same as what they're saying.
Why do the hours suck and how can they fix it? Hire more full time nurses. Why are they denied sick and vacation leave? Under staffing.
Why can't/don't they? Broken system
they keep the ad up sothat when roxy and joe walk in in the morning, the employer can tell them "uhm, unfortunately we can't find any other hire, so you 2 people will have to do the work of 3", effectively cheaping out of paying another person's wages.
Also because they need a person on standby when Roxy and Joe inevitably quit
from Now and After, by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 5: Unemployment. Available to read for free here.
A perfectly apt analysis. Thank you for the link. Anarchist Library has some good gems in there!
agreed, if you look at specific industry, or different stem industry. its shortage, but its artificially caused one. its the underhanding gatekeeping by keeping out entry level and choosing people already magically having years of experience in a low level position. all sorts of things like ghost listings, "internal hire but make claims of "not being able to find candidates" on the job sites. or its academically suppressed, for CLS(clinical labs) very limited amount of universities teach this program(1 year grad program) but im hearing they have shortages. and where do you think people will try to apply(california, most of them zeroed in on norcal) and only 9 schools teacch it in cali, you are competing with out of the state people.
it's not a crisis. companies have to pay more if they want to find employees. that's higher wages.
that is if there was an actual labor shortage. sadly, there is not.
or depending on the field, have these BS listing on the job sites, or if thier AI/software is even looking at a cv/resume at all.
It’s almost like somebody pays the workers much less than the revenues and pockets the difference
You would think, but for the most part daycare is a very low profit industry. The problem I think is that all the costs tend to scale with size. So having a lot more clients just means a lot higher costs.
There are exceptions of course, but all of those that I've seen also have some other luxury additions to basic care.
I can't see it as being a high expenditure business. Majority of spending should be towards rent/mortgage and repair and maintenance. It's not like there is a lot of consumables or anything. All that money has to go somewhere.
probably bs things like admin, or managment fees.
Cleaning supplies alone are a huge consumable. Arts & crafts materials. Toys are basically consumables because kids play rough. Same for books. Some daycares include breakfast, lunch, and snack. First aid supplies, kids hurt themselves all the time.
But yeah, definitely also lots of diverting profits up to the CEO 😓
probably not as much as employee salaries, if they offer benefits. and managment or administration costs(they claim)
I appreciate your realistic assessment here.
When we consider all that reasonably goes into running such a service, we can rationally figure out how much is being diverted to the wrong pockets and make it better.
i assume its for some type of insurance but I also don't run a day care.
I read an interview, probably from NPR, but I can't find it at the moment. The upshot was that caring for infants is insanely expensive, since they need one-on-one care pretty much continuously.
But parents can't afford that cost, so, essentially, the price they charge for infant care is a loss-leader, and parents of older children (who need less supervision and thus more favorable staffing ratios) subsidize the cost of caring for infants. Daycare operators are barely keeping afloat.
Edit: Ah, here it is: Baby's first market failure
They may require 1-on-1 interaction, but generally the ratio for 0-2's is around 1:4.
And many childcare companies are owned by huge multi-billion dollar investment firms because they are cash generators.
yucky, just like with MDs/nurses, MDs are being snatched up by teledoc and PE firms. so there is less private or specialists out there. the only other "common" one is based on a scam condition(chronic lyme)
This is the only answer that is not just a hand waiving "investors bad".
Are they required to provide for the more costly babies?
My wife and I had to pay $1600 a month for daycare as things opened up after the pandemic. The teachers there would have made more working at the Burger King across the street.
im not surprised. thats why people dont want to join the services, why bother when you can make more at walmart, target,,,etc. and they have a higher min wage.
Run by private equity?
mostly but its a cost-cutting measure to avoid paying MD, and RN prices.
No, not really at all. Some of the more expensive ones are, but that’s only because there is a profit margin on the wealthiest kids and aged. The floor for cost of care is ridiculously high for both groups, so there’s no margin to be made at anything below the crème de la crème facilities.
Most are, the investors need to make their money too! /s
The responses:
🤔
I've served on the board of non-profit daycares and I [vaguely] know at least one person who actually owns a for profit daycare.
Only a complete idiot would think they were going to make any money on a daycare. The overhead is nuts -- even when paying really shitty compensation -- and the competition is relentless.
What kind of things does the overhead go to?
Cheesy poofs
if its corporate is likely Large admin/managment fees. minus the staff salary, and benefits if they even provide it. other thing like maintaing the facilities.
And, here’s the kicker, they’re not even very profitable. This is the case for both for the same reason caring for the elderly and the young is insanely expensive.
It's a weird one because it's a huge expense but it's also completely concentrated to a subset of the population for a subset of their life. I think it should have a public option. 2 toddlers, not infants, could cost us 50k/year