Child care workers, crucial to economic recovery, earn poverty wages in 40 states
“Lavida Reaves spent more than a decade working as an early childhood educator at a daycare center, nurturing young minds and bodies day in and day out throughout most of her twenties, while the infants’ and toddlers’ parents earned livings in other professions. At her peak, after earning an associate’s degree in early childhood education, Reaves said she made $1,200 a month working for a small, community-based program in North Carolina. She loved the tightknit community her employer, Excel Christian Academy, provided. But she simply could not make ends meet, and pursued a bachelor’s degree so that she could transition to working in the public school system.”