Cost can affect workforce status
“What am I working to bring home at this point?”
Amanda Cypher of Saxonburg said of her decision five years ago to quit her full-time job of 13 years to raise her children.
Cypher said it wasn't the cost of day care for her two daughters, then an infant and 4-year-old, alone.
But the expenses of being a working parent — gasoline to commute, a stock of diapers for both home and day care, parking fees and taxes — tilted a little too far out of favor when her youngest daughter, Ava, got sick a couple of times. Cypher said she left work and missed pay to get her daughter during the day.
“It was then that my husband and I did the math, and I wasn't actually bringing that much home,” said Cypher, who worked in the IT department of a Butler City-based business.
Cypher said she liked her job and loved her day care provider. But the expenses versus benefits just didn't add up.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a national think tank that researches the impact of economic trends on the country's work force, a typical family in Pennsylvania would have to pay 31.9 percent of its income on child care for the combined costs of an infant and a 4-year-old.
Today, the annual cost to raise an infant in this state is $11,842, and the cost to raise a 4-year-old is $9,773, according to the institute.
Comparatively, that tallies to about 49.7 percent more than average rent in this state.
Hit hardest, the study finds, are parents with multiple children, single parents and minimum wage workers.
According to the report, a minimum wage worker in Pennsylvania would need to work full time for 41 weeks, or from January to October, just to pay for child care for an infant.
Now that her children are getting older and spend more hours in school, Cypher is easing back into the work force.
With her youngest now in half-day kindergarten, Cypher took a part-time retail job in the evenings. Next year, when Ava graduates to a full day of supervision, Cypher said she'd probably consider increasing her hours at work.
“I get a discount on purchases at work,” Cypher said. “That gets to be really important to us, especially around Christmas.”
