Teachers working with the state’s youngest kids are more than five times more likely to live in poverty than their counterparts instructing older students.

That’s just one finding in the recently published 2024 Early Childhood Workforce Index, which has tracked policies affecting those workers state by state since 2016. The index is published by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

The index, which uses data from the 2022 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, found the poverty rate for Maryland’s early childhood workforce is 12.3%, compared to 2.3% for elementary and middle school teachers. Additionally, over a third of Maryland households with an early childhood teacher use one or more public safety net programs, such as food stamps or Medicaid.

Even teachers who make it through decades in the field can struggle. Joey Wyrostek makes $24.50 an hour as a preschool teacher, over $10 more than the median wage for Maryland pre-K teachers. She has an associate degree and over 20 years of experience. Still, her pay is roughly $10 an hour less than teachers of older students.

While some dismiss Wyrostek’s job as babysitting, she does all the things expected of a teacher, including lesson plans and assessments that match a pre-K curriculum. It’s a job she’s only able to do because her income supplements her husband’s, the family’s primary breadwinner.

“I could never do it if I was the sole income,” Wyrostek said.

In 2022, the most recent year for which salary data is available, the median wage for an early childhood educator in Maryland was $14.17 an hour, roughly $1 more than the national median of $13.07, according to the index. In January, day cares had to stretch already tight budgets to meet Maryland’s new minimum wage of $15 an hour. That still falls below the $18.43 living wage for a single, childless adult, according to the report.

“Early educators are engaged in incredibly difficult and complex work that has been recognized as essential to children’s learning and development, supportive for families, and foundational to the economy,” the index reads. “Nonetheless, no states paid early educators a living wage in 2022.”

Nationally and in Maryland, the cost of child care keeps rising, even if that’s not reflected in teacher salaries. More parents have turned to the state’s child care subsidy program, which blew past its record budget earlier this fiscal year. Experts have warned that demand is only going to grow and that federal intervention is needed no matter how much the state invests. Wyrostek said she has coworkers who have to tap into the scholarship program to afford day care, despite working at one.

Maryland preschool teachers made more money on average, with a median wage of $14.44, than child care workers, who reported a median wage of $13.10.

Preschool teachers can work in the public and private sector. The state’s pre-K expansion plan calls for a rapid uptick in the number of seats at both kinds of preschools over the next five years.

But the private sector also includes child care workers who care for infants and toddlers, who are far more expensive to oversee because teachers can — physically and legally — watch fewer kids at a time.

Hiring more teachers means day care owners can’t afford to pay individuals more. It’s what Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist and policy researcher, described in a July interview as a broken business model.

“Children need the eyes, hands, attention of a capable adult. That means that it’s a very staff-heavy service,” Edwards said. “You can’t have 100 babies in a room. You can’t have AIs take care of babies. You can’t come up with some type of assembly line or logistical supply chain breakthrough. When it comes to child care, it fundamentally hasn’t changed in a millennium.”

Low wages contribute to the child care workforce shortage. According to the index, 40,100 early educators exist to support 431,000 children under 6.

Meanwhile, elementary and middle school teachers make a median wage of $37.09 — an over $20 per hour gap compared to the median wage for early childhood educators.

One of the requirements of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, legislation that calls for billions of dollars of investment in public education, is that teachers in private pre-K receive salaries and benefits comparable to public school teachers. The same legislation calls for more early childhood educators to get advanced degrees and certifications — with better pay as one incentive to pursue them.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.