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Authors’ note: CAP uses “Black” and “African American” interchangeably throughout many of our products. We chose to capitalize “Black” in order to reflect that we are discussing a group of people and to be consistent with the capitalization of “African American.” For the other demographic groups considered in this report, the authors defer to source language where applicable.

All across the nation—regardless of region and across a diversity of family types, racial and ethnic groups, and ages of children—mothers are driving forces of the American economy. Virtually all of the economic gains experienced by the typical middle-class family since 1970, for example, have been due to increases in women’s earnings.¹ From 1970 to 2013, women’s increased labor force participation and increased earnings grew the U.S. economy by 13.5 percent, which translates into an additional $2 trillion in economic activity.² Women, and mothers in particular, make up a significant proportion of the labor force, and their employment and wages are vital to the overall health of the labor market and the U.S. economy.

While the effects are enormous at the macro level of the economy, women’s and mother’s labor force participation and earnings are also vital to the well-being of their individual families. Long gone are the days when the stereotypical working mother was employed part time, after her children were all of school age and she was simply interested in bringing home pocket money to supplement her husband’s earnings. To be clear: This “Leave It to Beaver” cliché was never accurate for wide swaths of the population, including women of color, immigrant women, and working-class women, all of whom have historically been much more likely to work for pay than white middle-class women. But it is even less true today, when 64 percent of mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in their households, meaning that they earn a significant portion of their family’s income.³ Women of color, and Black women in particular, are especially likely to play this role for their families. More than 8 in 10—84.4 percent—of Black mothers are breadwinners or co-breadwinners, as are 6 in 10—60.3 percent—of Latinx mothers.⁴

But parents of young children—and especially mothers, due to cultural norms and societal expectations—are only able to participate in the labor force when they have access to work-family supports, including child care. The high cost of child care makes this especially difficult for most families. In 2014, a low-income family earning less than $50,000 per year that made child care payments spent one-third of this income on child care alone.⁵ Although the price of child care varies across the country and depending on the type of care being provided, all but the highest-income families spend more than 7 percent of their annual household income on child care; 7 percent is the federal definition of affordability.⁶ The result is that often parents find themselves in an impossible bind: needing reliable child care so that they can go to work but not earning enough money to easily afford the care their children need and deserve.

Child care is too often framed as an individual problem left up to parents to solve on their own, rather than as a public good. Parents, and sometimes extended families, are tasked with figuring out how to arrange and pay for child care and generally must do so in the absence of any meaningful public investment to help defray the cost. This approach ignores the important role that child care plays in the economy, particularly the caregiving economy. It devalues caregiving and masks the fact that the economy, and society overall, can only function if people keep going to work, something that can only happen if someone—be it a parent, family member, or paid caregiver—is providing child care.

Working mothers are especially likely to be employed in industries centered around providing critical services and supports in communities. This report explores the employment patterns of working mothers, concentrating on which industries are most likely to employ mothers whose children are young enough to still require access to child care.

Working mothers are most likely to work in elementary and secondary education, within hospital settings, and in food service. These are the jobs that affect the prospects of America’s future labor force and the health and well-being of communities, and they enable the employment of other workers by supplementing work that would otherwise need to be done at home, such as preparing food, educating children, and caring for ill or injured people. Yet median wages in these industries do not begin to cover the price of child care tuition at a licensed center or home after taking into account other basic needs. Consider, for example, that the median yearly salary for a K-12 teacher in the United States is around $41,000.⁷ Meanwhile, the annual price of licensed child care is about $10,000 per child. For food service workers—where Hispanic mothers are overrepresented—the median wage is less than $15,000 per year,⁸ which means that the average licensed child care prices would consume two-thirds of wages.⁹

It is not an exaggeration to argue that American society would not be able to function in its current state without the work being performed in these industries, and a lack of affordable child care options threatens working mothers’ ability to continue providing these essential functions. Supporting services that form the backbone of communities across the country and the U.S. economy requires further public investment in child care.

Child care responsibilities—whether performed as unpaid labor or the finding and arrangement of paid child care—are a form of household labor that falls disproportionately on mothers, and has a far more pronounced influence on their wages and employment than those of fathers. While child care responsibilities should be shared among all adult family members, the disparate impact on women and women’s labor force participation warrants consideration of how access to child care can improve women’s lives and of the impact that high child care costs have on women’s wages. Previous child care-related research has emphasized the impacts on maternal labor force participation, employment, and wages.¹⁷ This report focuses on the industries in which mothers are more likely to be employed in order to provide a clearer understanding of which industries are most affected by a lack of public investment in child care—and which industries would likely benefit from such investments.

Maternal employment by industry

While the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey categorizes jobs into more than 250 industry categories, nationwide, approximately 1 out of every 4 working mothers is employed in one of just three industries: elementary and secondary education, hospitals, and food service. This pattern is consistent across nearly all races and ethnicities. (see Table 1)

A full 1 in 10 working mothers with a child under age 13 are employed in elementary and secondary education, with work in hospitals and within food services following closely behind.¹⁸ Across all racial and ethnic groups, somewhere from roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of working mothers with young children work in these three industries.¹⁹

These industries reflect the backbone of U.S. communities, providing care and education as vital services. These are industries that are known for employing mostly women, and they are also industries that either pay low wages, have significant gender wage gaps, or both. They also require hours and schedules that are not necessarily conducive to traditional child care operating schedules. Food services and hospitals in particular are known as industries in which working long hours late into the night or overnight are not uncommon, and finding child care arrangements to accommodate these types of work hours can be challenging at best. Finding child care for nontraditional hours of care often includes patching together multiple arrangements from one’s social network, since traditional child care programs are generally closed and/or charge a premium in tuition costs.

Elementary and secondary education

Nearly 2 million working mothers, or 10 percent of working mothers with a child under age 13, are employed in elementary and secondary education. (see Table 1) Overall, elementary and secondary education is the most common industry for working mothers, and at first glance, some may assume that this is due to the perception that teachers and other school employees have flexibility in their schedules and that they do not need access to child care because their workdays end early and they have school vacations and summers “off” from work. However common these views may be, they do not necessarily reflect the reality for most working parents in the education system.

First, about 776,000 teachers, or close to 40 percent of mothers working in elementary and secondary schools, have children under age 5.²⁰ Teachers who are parents of young children, because they are more likely to be young themselves, are even more likely to be on the lower end of the earnings distribution for the profession. Teachers also work much longer hours than students are actually in school, arriving before the school day starts and working later in the afternoons and evenings to grade schoolwork, create lesson plans, and supervise extracurricular student activities. Teacher in-service days, staff development, and mandatory continuing professional development, education and training all go beyond the academic calendar.

For many teachers, the nature of their job makes it even more difficult to take unplanned absences when child care falls through. There is a shortage of substitute teachers across the country,²¹ and teachers are often discouraged from taking unplanned absences given the costs and complexity of arranging substitutes and of disruption to student learning. And while some teachers may have some time off in the summer, not all do. Summer school, continuing education requirements, and planning for the next school year can easily take up an entire summer. In addition, some teachers may need to take a second job over the summer in order to make ends meet. Even in cases where teachers are off from work during the summer, they may not be able to afford to lose a coveted child care slot by removing their child from paid care for a few months. While the majority of people working in elementary and secondary education are teachers, the same issues also apply to other occupations in the industry, such as teacher assistants and those in administrative roles.

Hospitals and the hospital industry

Another 1.6 million working mothers, or 8 percent of working mothers with a child under age 13, are employed in the hospital industry. This category includes a range of different occupations and job categories, including not only doctors and nurses but also laboratory technologists and specialty technicians, in addition to myriad other jobs. While these are occupations that require significant training and specialty education and thus tend to pay higher wages, they are also jobs with significant gender wage gaps. So while it may be difficult to imagine that a surgeon has difficulty affording high-quality child care, it is much easier to imagine the challenges faced by nurses or medical technicians in the same hospital setting.

Because hospitals must be open 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, hospital schedules are much less likely to align with operating hours for a traditional child care arrangement. People who are employed in hospitals are likely to encounter longer shifts, overnight and weekend shifts, and work on holidays. These are all times when formal child care programs, whether center- or home-based, are more likely to be closed or to charge an additional premium for nontraditional hours.

Food services

The restaurant and food services industry employs an additional 1.3 million working mothers, or 7 percent of working mothers with a child under age 13. The food service industry is notorious for offering demanding and often low-quality employment opportunities. The federal tipped minimum wage remains stuck at $2.13 per hour, making tipped food service workers dependent on their customers for tips, which tend to be highest on nights and weekends, the same time that most child care programs are closed or are even more expensive.²² A study of restaurant workers in New York conducted by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United found that affordable and accessible nighttime child care was unavailable for most workers, many of whom had to take on second jobs or change jobs in order to address their families’ child care needs, especially when their children were very young.²³

Race and ethnicity

The demographics of working mothers of young children mirror those of all mothers of children under age 18. (see Figure 1) Likewise, the most common industries in which mothers are employed are roughly the same across race and ethnicity, with some exceptions. For example, the top industry for Black mothers is hospitals and the top industry for Hispanic mothers is food service. These patterns are notable because they suggest that the jobs that are most likely to be unionized and come with benefits—such as those in elementary and secondary schools—are most likely to be held by white mothers.²⁷ And the jobs with the lowest pay, least predictable hours, and lowest benefits—food service jobs—are disproportionately likely to be held by Hispanic mothers. Mothers of color in particular are also likely to be overrepresented in other vital industries such as child care, home health care services and nursing facilities, and agriculture.

While white women make up the majority of all mothers and also the majority of working mothers of children under age 13, they are overrepresented in elementary and secondary schools, making up more than 80 percent of working mothers in this field. Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Hispanic mothers, as well as mothers who identify as the “other” racial category, are all underrepresented in the industry. (see Figure 2) Black mothers, for example, make up 15 percent of all working mothers with young children but comprise less than 10 percent of those working in elementary and secondary schools.

The racial demographics of mothers working in the hospital industry are more reflective of the demographics of all working mothers, although Asian and Pacific Islander mothers are slightly overrepresented at roughly 8.5 percent—compared with 6.25 percent of the overall population of working mothers—and mothers who identify as “other” are underrepresented at 5 percent, compared with more than 8 percent of the population of working mothers. Hispanic mothers are also underrepresented, making up only about 12 percent of working mothers with young children in the hospital industry, despite being 20 percent of the overall population of working mothers with a child under age 13. (see Figure 3) The broad industry categories can also mask racial and ethnic segregation within occupations. For example, white and Asian and Pacific Islander mothers who have small children and work in the hospital industry are roughly twice as likely to be registered nurses, an occupation that pays higher wages, compared with Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Hispanic mothers. Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Hispanic mothers are all much more likely to be working as health aides, technicians, cleaners, or receptionists than white and Asian and Pacific Islander mothers.²⁸

The food service industry demographics largely mirror overall racial demographics for working mothers, although the ethnic demographics show a clear overrepresentation of Hispanic mothers in the industry. (see Figure 4) Although mothers in the “other” racial category are slightly overrepresented, in general white, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, and American Indian and Alaska Native mothers demonstrate employment in the food service industry in roughly the same patterns as the overall population. However, mothers who identify as Hispanic are much more likely to be employed in food services, making up close to one-third of all working mothers with young children in the field, despite only comprising 20 percent of working mothers with children under age 13 overall.

Parents across the income spectrum report difficulty affording child care for their children, proving that this is not only a problem for very low-income families. This is not surprising, given the fact that the cost of child care has more than doubled over the past 20 years, while wages for workers have been largely stagnant over the same time period.²⁹ Black mothers are significantly more likely to report cost as a barrier to accessing child care compared with white mothers,³⁰ a fact that reflects the impact of the racial wage gap and Black women’s lower wages in spite of their high levels of labor force attachment and educational attainment.^{https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2019/12/10/478387/economics-caregiving-working-mothers/}