The UC Berkeley Labor Center report estimates the cost of raising child care workers' wages in California under the new state minimum wage law. The law requires child care centers and licensed in-home providers to increase wages for employees earning less than the new minimum wage. This could have a significant impact on providers, especially those with low-wage workers. The cost of the wage increase may not be covered by the amount providers receive for caring for children covered by state child care subsidy programs, which are determined by state and county reimbursement rates. The report presents a methodology for estimating the additional child care subsidy funding needed to cover the cost of the wage increase for programs administered by the California Department of Education and the Department of Social Services through the CalWORKs program. The methodology uses administrative data to estimate the number of eligible workers and the cost of the wage increase, and then calculates the additional funding needed to cover these costs.
