How about getting some of that sweet, sweet industrial policy for an industry that really needs it? Not manufacturing plants. Not the tech sector. I’m talking about the “care” industry — the sector that’s needed to grease the wheels when it comes to the rest of the economy but one that Congress has largely ignored. The U.S. economy has more than recovered all the jobs lost in the pandemic. But there are a few sectors that are not close to recovering all the workers they lost or laid off early in 2020. Among them: child-care providers (whose ranks have begun shrinking again in recent months) as well as nursing and residential care facilities. Both of these industries employ about 10 percent fewer workers today than was the case pre-pandemic. Collectively they’ve lost almost half a million jobs on net since February 2020.
Rampell: Care work is in crisis. That’s a disaster for the rest of the economy.
October 17, 2022
