this next story will come as no surprise to parents of little ones New Jersey's Child Care industry is significantly struggling to recover from the pandemic even as more parents return to the workforce a new report from Rutgers University finds the need for child care is growing but workers and programs are at an all-time low Melissa Rose Cooper reports it's hard because we're talking to these parents every day and they're begging us to take their children and we can't because we don't have the teachers to properly care for them a major issue Cindy Shield senior director of YMCA Healthcare Services says continues to play Child Care Centers since the pandemic providers like the YMCA have been having difficulty properly Staffing classrooms in Middlesex County as a whole child care centers are reporting about 10 10 fewer children per Center and 75 percent of centers are reporting that they are serving less children because they don't have the staff I have empty classrooms I have empty mg classrooms empty centers that I haven't been able to open because I haven't been able to restaff them Child Care Centers across New Jersey are facing similar issues according to a new report from the Rutgers Center for Women and work providers are struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels despite overall employment recovering by the third quarter of 2021. the child care industry is face of face Staffing and retention issues for years and the pandemic made it worse Deborah Lancaster is the executive director for the Center for Women and work she says research shows a 26 decrease in the number of center-based child care facilities between 2019 and 2020. home-based providers experienced a 38 drop and they're still declining and that is something that we might want to pay attention to because family-based Child Care are those child care providers that are located in the community in the neighborhood and tend to serve parents um who have less standard work hours who may need you know really early care or care later in the day and so we are find it interesting that that part of the child care industry hasn't recovered and continues to decline members of the child care industry blissen with many teachers making roughly 18 to 19 an hour pre-pandemic early childhood was already in somewhat of a crisis meaning like workers were already struggling with wages with lack lack of decent wages lack of benefits families were already struggling with the cost of child care and so the pandemic just accelerated a path that you know the industry unfortunately was already on I just think that it's really important that people remember that you know while a lot there we add we can't take our our foot off the gas pedal and we need to just really keep reminding the um reminding society that Early Education is not back to pre-pandemic situations by any stretch of the imagination and we know more now as a society about how important Early Education is and how vital that that Workforce is and so we need to continue to be talking about how do we Elevate this Workforce how do we compensate this Workforce so that they can be invested in their work and that work can then be invested in the children the state Economic Development Authority is now allocating nearly 75 million dollars to help fund Child Care Centers as part of its Child Care Facilities Improvement program Advocates say more funding is needed to make sure Child Care is accessible and affordable for everyone for NJ Spotlight news I'm Melissa Rose Cooper [Music]