As the city reopens and our economy begins to recover from the pandemic, it is crucial that we support parents, particularly Black and Latino New Yorkers, women and communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted by the economic downturn, as they re-enter the workforce. One critical support for families in accomplishing this is ensuring they have options for care for their children.

CCC recently published two factsheets demonstrating the crippling shortage of child care available in NYC for the youngest children and for the full day/year-round care that working families depend on.

The data illustrate the extent to which NYC’s child care affordability crisis displaces women and low income New Yorkers from the labor force:

• Child care for infant and toddlers is unaffordable for families across the income spectrum and particularly for households with low incomes.
• Half of infants and toddlers in NYC live in households with low incomes, and yet only 16% of income-eligible infant and toddlers are receiving care through subsidized, publicly funded early education system.
• Three out of every four households with children living in poverty lost employment income since March 2020 in NY Metro Area.
• As New York’s economy and schools reopened, 41% of women (ages 25 to 54) with children remained out of work.

The data also underscore the fact that New York City lacks full workday, year-round child care options for working parents:

• Only 15% of four-year-olds in the City’s Universal Pre-K program received full-day/year- round care in 2019.
• The city expanded Pre-K for three-year-olds in 2020 to include home-based providers, but almost all added seats were for school-day/school-year programs.
• In several NYC neighborhoods, less than 10% of Pre-K seats are full-day, year-round seats.

Despite all the progress New York City has made in building toward universal access to Pre-k and 3-K, the Executive Budget included no new investments in full-day/year-round care or care for the youngest children. In order to ensure that child care and preschool is available for working families, CCC and the Campaign for Children are advocating to ensure that the Adopted Budget includes the following investments:

• $10 million for approximately 1000 new full-day family child care slot for infants and toddlers.
• $17.5 million to convert over 2,000 school-day/school-year slots for 3 and 4-year old children to full-day/year-round slots.
• $17.5 million to expand center-based infant toddler capacity by approximately 700 slots.

Time is running out! Help us ensure our city leaders expand access to child care services that are critical to supporting working families in their recovery from the pandemic.