Economic Impact Child Care Calculator

What is Lack of Child Care Already Costing Your Business?

This calculator is a free resource for any PA business to assess their existing financial losses due to their employees’ lack of adequate access to the reliable child care they need to work.

How do I use the calculator? Replace our pre-loaded estimates with your company’s figures in the beige fields — total employees, percentage with children, average hourly wage. Expected hours absent & work hours are static assumptions based on PA statistics; employees who quit over child care is calculated based on rounded estimates of 2.8%.

How do I apply the information from this calculator to my business? Child Care is one of the biggest contributors to hiring & retention problems. The premise for this calculator is that it provides you, a business leader with estimates of what inadequate child care access is already costing your company, giving you the information that you need to proactively divert these dollars towards child care solutions that will help you hire & retain workers, and actually provide a return on investment.

1. *This calculator is an adaptation of the Louisiana Business Workforce Calculator; its intended use is for use by Pennsylvania businesses.

Why does this calculator ask for percentage of parents with children ages 0-17 versus children <6 years old? While care for very young children is a significant obstacle for working parents, care for older children remains a significant barrier impacting the workforce, with COVID-related school closures, school breaks, summer vacation, & school cancellations for inclement weather all impacting a parents’ decision to re-enter & stay in the workforce. Additionally, there are some school districts in PA where school ends at 2:30pm — long before the workday ends. If you wish to assess economic impact with different age parameters, simply add the relevant percentage at your place of employment for the age range you wish to measure.

What if my business struggles to hire & retain workers, in part, due to child care but also for other reasons, such as we rely on staffing during 2nd/3rd/weekend shifts?

If you are a business that relies on a stable workforce during nontraditional work times, we completely understand your struggle and are here for you. Along The Way understands that in certain industries, the lack of a stable workforce poses great risks — not only to the viability of your business, but also to the people you serve. For example, in medical settings, staff-to-patient ratios must be maintained, which means you may be hiring temporary agency staff or offering overtime to existing employees — both of which may come with their own unique challenges to service quality and employee morale.

To learn more about how Along The Way partners with employers requiring shift workers, book a call with us. For employers who are in industries with high turnover and/or whose staffing expenses are exceedingly high (overtime/agency staff has become the norm, Along The Way can help you assess the financial impact of staffing issues in more depth.

For more information about this calculator, submit your question here.