Lack of affordable child care is a billion-dollar problem for Miami-Dade

MIAMI — A billion-dollar crisis is brewing among Miami-Dade parents with young children — and their employers.

Child care costs are draining parents’ wallets and hitting their employers’ bottom lines, according to a new study published by The Women’s Fund Miami-Dade.

The average cost of day care for an infant has hit $13,560 per year in Miami-Dade — more than $1,100 per month — the Fund found.

“We know that’s just not on the table for most people,” said CEO Marya Meyer.

That’s more than double the annual in-state tuition at any of Florida’s state universities. But unlike state college tuition, public subsidies for child care are scarce. Those five-, sometimes six-figure costs typically aren’t financed over decades. For working parents, it’s either pay up, week after week, or stay home.

Both families and their employers feel the burden. Miami-Dade’s economy loses nearly $1 billion annually because of workers’ child care issues, according to The Women’s Fund.

Businesses foot much of the bill — in missed shifts, last-minute overtime, lost productivity and replacing employees who leave the workforce altogether, as one in six working Florida parents do.

Child care remains unaffordable for many Miami-Dade families

Antonia Kincannon knows that struggle firsthand.

The 33-year-old nurse and single mother of three says she pays $180 per week for her 1-year-old daughter’s day care. That’s almost 14% of her monthly pre-tax income of $5,200. It’s on top of what she spends on food, rent, transportation and clothes for herself and her kids — all of whom are growing fast — leaving her, like thousands of other Miami households, with pretty much nothing left over to save.

And it’s double the federal government’s affordability benchmark for child care, which the Department of Health and Human Services determined shouldn’t exceed 7% of a household’s income.

By that measure, only 18% of local households can truly “afford” child care, according to The Women’s Fund report.

Kincannon’s isn’t one of them. Salaries in Miami, she says, just aren’t matching the cost of living — not even by a long shot. The Fund’s Self Sufficiency Standard calculates how much a household would need to earn to get by in Miami-Dade without financial assistance. Someone in Kincannon’s position — with one infant and two school-aged children — would need to earn $123,500 per year, almost double her current salary, to sustainably make ends meet.

Even still, Kincannon’s $68,000 salary disqualifies her from School Readiness, the state’s federally funded child care assistance program. Households can’t make above 55% of the state median income to access School Readiness. For a four-person family like Kincannon’s, that’s $56,685.

And that’s actually more generous than Florida’s School Readiness qualifications were last year, when they were tied to the federal poverty line — $32,000 for a four-person household.

Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud of Miami-Dade championed the eligibility change. But the Florida Legislature didn’t increase overall funding, she said. What that means is that more families are competing for the same pot of money. “There’s been tremendous hesitancy from the Legislature to increase the amount of state revenue put into early learning programs,” said Calatayud.

Still, advocates like Evelio Torres, CEO of Miami-Dade’s Early Learning Coalition, which administers School Readiness funds locally, celebrated the change. He hopes for more.

“We don’t see additional funding, at least not in the immediate term,” Torres said. “But we would still like to expand eligibility because we need families, at least those making minimum wage, to qualify.”

Sanchez, the head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, hopes that expansion can keep more young children in early-learning schools, their parents at their jobs and their parents’ employers operating smoothly.

Because right now, with child care problems causing one in four parents, often mothers, to cut back working hours and one in six to leave entirely, Miami-Dade parents and businesses alike are feeling the pain. Per a Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce survey of its members, 75% of respondents said their business operations were impacted by their employees’ insufficient access to affordable child care.

Seven in 10 said employee absenteeism — a parent staying home because their child couldn’t, for whatever reason, access child care that day — had been a problem. One in five cited last-minute overtime costs, while nearly half said their company’s productivity had taken a hit.

A quarter had incurred turnover expenses, and 17% said they had openings they were unable to fill because working parents had left their jobs due to challenges accessing child care.

“Especially in a community like ours, which is mostly small businesses, missing one or two [employees] is a dramatic impact,” said Sanchez. More than 80% of local companies have fewer than 10 employees.

But with child care costs as high as they are, some parents, like Kincannon, have found it just makes more financial sense to look after their kids themselves.

It was during COVID, when her 5-year-old was in preschool and her household still had two incomes, that Kincannon left her job altogether, electing to stay home and watch her son rather than pay for child care. “It didn’t make sense to continue working just to pay day care,” she reasoned.

Kincannon was sad to leave her job. She was more upset to have to pull her son out of school. “I feel like children need to be around other children and get that knowledge” in a professionally led classroom setting, she said.

A child’s first five years of early learning are crucial, said Madeleine Thakur, president of the statewide advocacy group The Children’s Movement of Florida.

The Florida Department of Education estimates that 75% of children who enter kindergarten behind will never catch up to their classmates. “State and local prekindergarten programs, almost without exception, improve academic readiness for school,” the Department found.

By third grade, it added, children who had participated in a pre-kindergarten program consistently scored higher on language arts tests than their non-participant peers. Even more than a decade later, those with early learning experiences graduate high school at higher rates.

And so not only is improving child care access an issue for today’s workforce, said Sanchez. It’s also about ensuring the quality of tomorrow’s.

“The workforce of today is absolutely suffering,” said Alfred Sanchez, president of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. “That turns into losses for businesses.”

James Haj, president of The Children’s Trust of Miami-Dade, agreed. “Quality child care enables parents and caregivers to work and contribute to our local economy, while also ensuring children are ready for kindergarten, improving academic outcomes. It’s all upside from our perspective,” Haj said.

What can be done?

If the Legislature doesn’t further raise the income ceiling, some families might find they make too much to qualify later this year, when the state minimum wage hits $15 an hour, noted Torres, of the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe.

Ultimately, more money is needed to close the gap between families that qualify for aid programs and those that actually receive them, said Thakur. “Putting more public dollars into the system just means serving more families,” she said.

Currently in Miami-Dade, just over 19,300 children are enrolled in School Readiness, according to the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe. More than 3,800 are on the waitlist.

Reports earlier this month suggested the Trump administration was considering a nationwide freeze on all federal child care funding following allegations of fraud at Minnesota day care centers. The Department of Health and Human Services clarified this week that only California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York will see their federal child care dollars — roughly $10 billion in total — halted. Florida isn’t affected.

From the business side, Sanchez says he’s been encouraging his members to take advantage of tax credits. Starting next year, businesses can get up to a half-million dollars — or $600,000 for eligible small businesses — in federal tax credits by providing child care to their workers.

Sanchez says some small local businesses have pooled their resources to essentially buy out spots in local child care centers to take advantage of that credit.

And while there is a $5 million state child care tax credit available to businesses, “it’s way too little,” he said and, at least among his members, hasn’t yet been widely used.

Beyond that, Sanchez urged businesses to be flexible with families when they can, perhaps in scheduling or by providing a “cafeteria-style benefits plan,” wherein parents can select the benefits they want. Presumably, child care subsidies would be on the menu.

Whatever it is, Kincannon sighed, “child care needs better support.”