Starbucks Announces New Backup Child Care Benefit for Employees

From the National Women's Law Center:

While businesses benefit when their employees have stable, affordable child care, very few businesses offer child care assistance or benefits to their workers. Only 7 percent of employers with 50 employees or more reported providing child care at or near the worksite to their employees in 2016. Only 2 percent of more than 3,000 employers surveyed by the Society of Human Resource Management in 2018 reported helping employees pay for child care, with 5 percent offering backup care. But even when employers offer child care benefits, not all workers have access. Low-wage workers—who have the greatest difficulty finding and paying for childcare—only rarely receive child care benefits at work. While ten percent of private industry workers overall had access to workplace-funded childcare in 2015, for example, only five percent of workers whose wages were in the bottom 25 percent did so.

That is why Starbucks’ announcement of its new backup care benefit policy yesterday was good news. Under the new policy, employees can receive 10 subsidized backup days of childcare. And the subsidy is a real one: center-based backup care will cost $5 per day, and in-home backup childcare will cost as little as $1 an hour. In-Home care is an especially important option for parents with lower earnings, especially if they are working evenings, weekends, or variable hours.

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