Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry President and CEO Gene Barr issued the following statement upon the release of a joint report between the PA Chamber, PA Early Learning Investment Commission, and the Center for Rural Pennsylvania on childcare and the workforce:
“Families have long strived to balance work and raising children. This tension was made all the more obvious throughout the pandemic when business closures threw many Pennsylvania families’ childcare arrangements into chaos. As part of our ‘Bringing PA Back’ initiative, we teamed up with the PA ELIC and the Center for Rural PA to determine what employers across the Commonwealth are doing today to support families and their workforce and how we can help them in the future. The findings in this report include best practices for businesses and program administrators and, we hope, will help inform lawmakers developing public policy that strengthens childcare and the workforce.”
Key Report Findings:
- Many employers have a workforce with moderate to high childcare needs.
- While flexible work schedules and remote work arrangements are the most common solutions, Pennsylvania employers currently employ various strategies to assist with childcare.
- During the pandemic, childcare emerged as one of the more significant reasons why employers believe they lost employees.
- Most employers offered additional childcare supports during the pandemic to meet labor needs, with 41 percent planning to keep those supports in place after the pandemic ends.
- There is strong interest among employers of all business sizes to support working families with childcare needs – most employers see it as a way to improve retention, recruitment, productivity and reputation.
A summary of the report is available here.