Child care matters not only to families but to the economy and a recent report outlines its growing economic power, including the billions of dollars it generates every year in New York State.

The Cornell University policy brief spells out how child care helps 775,000 parents work and earn $30 billion, generates $4.7 billion a year on its own, through such things as parent fees and government investments, and employs 119,000 workers in New York.

“Child care teachers, aides and staff represent one of the fastest growing employment sectors in the economy,” the report said.

All of this economic clout is finally influencing business leaders, who increasingly realize child care affects their balance sheets. More than 80 percent of surveyed chamber of commerce officials and economic developers agreed a lack of affordable child care hurts worker productivity, the report found. In addition, 67 percent feel a lack of quality child care hurts businesses’ ability to recruit.

“Child care is becoming a key part of New York State’s economic development plans,” researchers wrote. “Just like roads and bridges, a high quality child care system is part of the infrastructure for economic development by enabling working parents to work, as well as investing in the future labor force (children),” they suggested.

The brief’s most important section, though, is its evidence of one of the new economy’s greatest disconnects: Service jobs are a defining feature of the U.S. economy, but many of these jobs don’t pay workers enough to cover their child care costs. It’s hard to overstate this critical point in an economy increasingly defined by two-career families.

“While a few high-end industries also experienced job growth, the job expansion of these high wage industries reached 160,000, barely exceeding half the growth of low-wage jobs. Clearly, these trends indicate a growing challenge for NYS (New York State) employees who have to pay the high cost of child care with increasingly lower wages. This also represents a challenge for employers who need to attract and retain parent workers.” – The Economic Importance of the Child Care Sector, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University. September.

The two-page briefing is packed with facts and analysis. It was based on work done by New York State’s Child Care Coordinating Council and Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning.