July 23, 2021
The childcare gap has been one of the largest barriers to women moving into senior-level management positions and advancing their careers—an issue affecting 129 million women around the world. A recent study examining the economic impacts of the nation’s childcare crisis found that there is an annual economic cost of $57 billion in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue.
The inaccessibility of childcare leaves many parents on waiting lists for daycares and preschools for months with one in three families reporting difficulty finding care. Many of these families live in childcare deserts, areas with either no or very few childcare providers. In fact, more than half of people in the United States live in a childcare desert. This number jumps in low-income neighborhoods where affordability only heightens the issue. On average, families pay more for center-based childcare for infants than they do to send an 18-year-old to a public college.
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is addressing this problem. Citing childcare as one of the greatest barriers to achieving equity in the workplace and in pursuit of an equal society, Recursion recently opened a childcare center adjacent from its Salt Lake City headquarters. The company hopes that other employers will become part of the solution as well, particularly in Utah where 77% of all residents live in a childcare desert.
Partnering with Bright Horizons, Recursion’s new center provides childcare for employees’ children from infancy to five years old. To further its commitment to supporting working parents, Recursion joined Time’s Up Care Economy Business Council, a coalition working to create a society free of gender-based discrimination in the workplace and beyond.
The option for employer-sponsored childcare such as Recursion’s is empowering for many in the workforce. Mothers are significantly more likely to be employed if their family has a viable childcare option. In fact, about one-in-five working parents, including 23% of working moms and 15% of working dads, say they have turned down a promotion because they were balancing work and parenting responsibilities. Beyond turning down opportunities, about 43% of women workers had at least one year with no earnings. Leaving the workforce for childcare has many consequences for career advancement including 39% lower annual earnings than women who worked all 15 years between 2001 and 2015.
For companies like Recursion, which is actively engaged in recruiting more women into STEM careers, making quality childcare more accessible just makes sense. Childcare access is also an early opportunity to cultivate academic advancement and socio-emotional skills for children. A 2016 study found that by age 5, children who attended formal childcare programs had substantially stronger reading and math skills relative to similar children who attended informal, home-based childcare settings.
As our economy continues to reopen and employees lose the flexible work schedules and remote work options the pandemic provided, many families are faced with the decision to pay for childcare they cannot afford, settle for lesser quality childcare, or leave the workforce. Though not every business can provide onsite childcare (in fact, just 6% of U.S. companies offer this benefit), employers could be critical to providing targeted solutions to meet employees needs. For example, other companies in our portfolio are providing stipends to help pay for the high cost of quality, reliable childcare. And during the pandemic – recognizing the childcare dilemma many working parents were facing – many manufacturers offered a third shift or flexible scheduling to help accommodate family needs.
Hats off to Recursion for its commitment to improving childcare accessibility for its employees, and to all the other companies that are offering support to working families in other ways. These benefits create an environment that attracts and retains top talent while helping households achieve greater financial stability.
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