The scarcity of child care facilities and qualified workers to staff them is costing Massachusetts families $1.7 billion a year in lost wages due to missing work or reduced work hours, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Additionally, employers are losing $812 million a year in low productivity and employee turnover and replacement costs because workers cannot find adequate child care, according to the foundation.

The scarcity of child care facilities and qualified workers to staff them is costing Massachusetts families $1.7 billion a year in lost wages due to missing work or reduced work hours, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

The state of Massachusetts invested a record $1.3 billion in child care in fiscal year 2023, but 16,000 children are still on the wait list for subsidized care, according to a new Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation report. Inadequate access to affordable child care costs the state around $2.7 billion a year in lost earnings for employees and $812 million for employers, the report found.

Massachusetts isn't helping as many low-income families access childcare as it could or should, according to a new report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. The report says more than 16,000 children are on a waiting list for a state childcare subsidy, according to the most recent count last February.

A previous report by the foundation estimated inadequate childcare access costs the state $2.7 billion a year in lost earnings for employees and $812 million for employers.

The Massachusetts childcare subsidy program is complicated, inefficient and fails the families who need it most, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. The subsidy program provides vouchers for low-income families but is a complex system that serves three different eligible populations with two forms of subsidies and uses multiple funding streams.

Overall, the lack of child care options in Massachusetts is costing working families, some of whom are spending 20% to 40% of their annual income on programs.

The average cost of child care is more than $20,000 a year in Massachusetts, the most expensive state in the nation, only behind Washington, D.C., and well above the national average of $15,888, according to a recent report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Over the last two years, the child care industry has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Child care closures, labor shortages, and changing workforce patterns have upended a system that was already in crisis due to high costs and limited access. To help address these challenges, states and localities received an unprecedented amount of federal dollars to help the industry recover. Investments were made through new and existing federal programs such as the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), the Child Care Stabilization Fund, and the Fiscal Recovery Fund (FRF).

The average cost of child care is more than $20,000 a year in Massachusetts, the most expensive state in the nation, only behind Washington, D.C., and well above the national average of $15,888, according to a recent report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

A new study by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation demonstrates how urgent the situation is. Before accounting for people who left the workforce during the pandemic, working families lose $1.7 billion in wages annually when they miss work or have to reduce hours because they don’t have enough child care options. But it’s not just families. Employers lose $812 million due to lower productivity, costs due to turnover and rehiring expenses. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth sees $188 million in state tax revenues disappear every year due to lower earnings and lost wages.

The lack of child care options in Massachusetts is costing families, businesses and the state government more than $2.7 billion a year.

That’s according to a report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which reports that working families are losing an estimated $1.7 million a year in lost wages from not being able to show up for work because they can’t find or afford child care services.