South Shore Stars early childhood program in Weymouth, Mass., received zero applicants this summer for its preschool teacher positions. It was a big change from when Director Jennifer Curtis was superintendent of a local school district and routinely had 200 people apply for elementary school jobs.

The problem, Curtis said, is day care workers typically make about $12 an hour and work a demanding job year-round. Public schools and other employers, who are also scrambling to hire workers, are poaching child-care workers by offering thousands of dollars more a year and better benefits. A nearby Dunkin' starts pay at $14 an hour.

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Nearly 1.6 million moms of children under 17 are still missing from the labor force. They dropped out during the pandemic to care for children and have not been able to return to work as the school and day care situation remains chaotic, especially for unvaccinated children under the age of 12. There are still covid outbreaks occurring at schools, and some childcares and after-school programs remain closed or they are accepting fewer children.

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"Childcare is a textbook example of a broken market," said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a mother herself. She pointed out that families pay, on average, 13 percent of their income on child-care for young kids, yet day care workers earn so little they rank in the bottom 2 percent of all professions. Biden has proposed the largest federal investment ever in child-care in an effort to transform the sector.

"This is a crisis," said Diane Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association. "Parents are looking for child-care, but now it's this Catch-22. We don't have the staff, so we can't open the classrooms, so families can't go back to work because they can't find child-care."

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"The pay is absolute crap for what's required for the position," said Tanzie Roberts, who quit in June. "I can't afford to live on my own and work the child-care jobs that I am qualified for."