Emerging sources of talent are paving the way for a more diverse and accessible labor force within the care sector. From parents helping parents out with child care, state government supporting apprenticeship models for child care and early childhood,  EMTs and paramedics supporting home health outcomes, and family caregivers finally receiving compensation for their care work, these new sources of talent are making an impact. 

Although they may not fully replace the formal caregiver workforce, they have undoubtedly alleviated the weight of care responsibilities, sparked innovative thinking, and offered relief to overworked and exhausted caregivers.

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The workforce of caregivers has long been an overlooked and undervalued sector. However, three years ago, the emergence of COVID-19 spotlighted the challenges and invaluable contributions of this essential  workforce. 

The pandemic ignited a wave of advocacy and awareness, from non-profit organizations to the Build Back Better plan, that placed emphasis on job quality, access expansion, and equitable pay for both professional and family caregivers. The once invisible and underappreciated role of caregivers is now receiving the attention and recognition it deserves.

One of the most impactful ways to support the existing care workforce is by enabling them to work at the highest level of their expertise, focusing on tasks they excel at while outsourcing or streamlining other responsibilities. Innovative technological solutions, specifically AI and machine learning have demonstrated their ability to relieve care workers of repetitive tasks such as scheduling, tracking hours, and reminders. According to the American Hospital Association¹, AI can already do 40% of the tasks done by non-clinical healthcare workers and 33% of the tasks done by clinical staff. 

These solutions can also improve communication, and the digitization of data and information exchange, between care workers, families, providers, and care teams, ultimately saving time and enhancing knowledge transfer.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of care workers and their essential role in our society. However, the care workforce has been undervalued and undercompensated for far too long. Teachers, daycare workers, home health aides, nurses, and unpaid family caregivers have been pushed to their limits, causing many to leave the workforce. 

As a result, our economy and society are suffering, with 100,000 fewer child care workers, 300,000 fewer nurses, and 570,000 fewer educators in the US. This loss of care workers has created a devastating ripple effect, impacting the quality and accessibility of care across the board. It is critical that we recognize the value of the care workforce and invest in the recruitment, training, and retention of care workers to build a more resilient and equitable care infrastructure.

The long-term care profession has struggled for years to attract, train, and retain new care workers due to subpar wages, dire working conditions, and difficult work. The average care worker - home health aides, residential care aides, nursing assistants - makes about $14.27 an hour.¹ Median annual earnings for direct care workers are just $21,700 and 40% of direct care workers live in low-income households, with 43% relying on public assistance such as Medicaid and SNAP assistance. 

Care facilities - assisted living facilities, skilled nursing homes, memory care facilities - were one of the hardest hit sectors during the pandemic due to a high risk population, making up at least 23% of all COVID deaths in the U.S. as of Jan 1, 2022. The current working conditions, deaths caused by the pandemic, worker shortages, and increasing demand for long-term care workers has made this nothing short of a snowballing crisis. 

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There have been several well-intentioned but double edged policies that have impacted the child care sector. The biggest of which is the movement towards
universal pre-k, where the unintended consequences of moving four-year-olds out of a current system and into a new one has significant implications - for families, care workers, and child care businesses. 

Families are needing to reconfigure logistics and care workers lose continuity of care with toddlers. But most importantly, child care businesses, already operating on razor thin child-worker ratios, lose toddlers that help to balance out the time-intensive infants under their care. Other policies like D.C.’s requirement for workers to all have post-secondary credentials were made to improve the quality of care for the field, but the low pay makes pursuing  further education challenging. Regulators and policymakers need to account for the impact on the system these policies have and ensure that it is a win-win on all fronts, rather than creating more unintended consequences for an already fragile sector. 

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