(1) The general assembly finds and declares that:
Colorado's economic recovery depends on its workforce having access to stable, high-quality, and affordable child care. Supporting the ability of Colorado's workforce to return to work during and after the COVID-19 public health emergency is estimated to have an economic enabling effect of more than four billion four hundred million dollars in income.
The COVID-19 public health emergency has significantly impacted Colorado's childcare sector by reducing child care provider revenues while at the same time increasing expenses. Child care provider operating costs have increased to include additional daily cleaning, daily health monitoring, supplying personal protective equipment for child care workers, and lower staff-to-child ratios to allow for sufficient physical distancing.
In Colorado, this additional cost burden has forced ten percent of the state's child careproviders to close their doors since March 2020. Almost three-quarters of all child care providers indicate they have or will engage in layoffs, furloughs, or pay cuts. For minority-owned or operated child care providers, this figure is even higher. More than twenty-five percent of existing child care providers report that closure is imminent without some kind of financial intervention.
Child care providers generate revenue primarily through enrollment and tuition feesand the business model depends on full enrollment;
At every stage of the COVID-19 public health emergency, parents have been facedwith the difficult choice to pull their children from child care, either due to health concerns or because the economic recession has impacted their ability to afford it. Statewide, enrollment in child care for children less than five years of age has decreased by thirty-nine percent since the COVID-19 public health emergency began.
Colorado faces other ongoing threats to the child care sector's sustainability, including high turnover and low pay in the child care profession, as well as the prohibitively expensive cost of opening and operating a child care program;
More than half of Coloradans live in a "child care desert", where there are more thanthree children less than five years of age for each single available child care opening. Some rural areas completely lack licensed child care providers. Statewide, Colorado faces a dramatic shortage of at least thirty-nine thousand spots for infants and toddlers.
Most child care in Colorado is owned or operated by women, and more than fortypercent of our child care workforce is composed of women of color. Furthermore, throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency, women of color have been more likely to be on the front lines as essential workers and are more likely to lose their jobs.
Despite women's steadily increasing labor participation rates and earning trajectoriesover the past twenty-five years, the COVID-19 public health emergency threatens to set back a generation of progress. When women exit the workforce, they face more barriers than men do to return, and their future earning potential and path to retirement security suffers.
Women have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 public health emergency: Almost one hundred seventy-nine thousand women left Colorado's labor force between February and May 2020, compared to eighty-eight thousand men. Nationally, four times as many women as men dropped out of the labor force in September 2020 alone. The impact of this trend on the United States' economy and the well-being of women and families is estimated to amount to approximately sixty-four million five hundred thousand dollars in lost income and economic activity.
(2) (a) Therefore, the general assembly finds it is a matter of statewide concern that we take immediate action to save and protect our child care infrastructure. Doing so enables the state to invest in its children's futures, advance gender equity in the home and the workplace, and rebuild an economy that works for all Coloradans. When Colorado families have access to child care, everyone benefits.
(b) The general assembly further finds that, to assist the state's workforce in returning to work and maintaining employment without facing the difficult choice between working and accessing quality child care, it is critical that the state allocate and quickly distribute funding to existing and new child care providers throughout the state.
Source: L. 2020, 1st Ex. Sess.: Entire part added, (HB 20B-1002), ch. 10, p. 53, § 1, effective December 7.