The pandemic has thrown the whole childcare industry into crisis—along with working parents that rely on it. More than 10,000 workers have left childcare jobs just since June. That's a huge exodus. Marcy Whitebook, the emerita director of the Center for the Study of Childcare Employment at the University of California-Berkeley, talks about the mass departure of childcare workers and what it means for families.

According to new research from economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Brandeis University, wage gains for low-wage workers at other businesses are a direct result of Amazon's corporate decision to increase starting pay to $15 an hour three years ago, which appears to have lifted pay for low-wage workers in other local companies as well. "When you have major changes in the wage policies of large actors in the labor market, this has ripple effects," said co-author Ellora Derenoncourt.

According to a new report from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley, preschool teachers and child care workers earn 38% less than their colleagues in the K-8 system. "The crisis existed before the pandemic but increasingly folks are seeing how critical child care is to the economy," report co-author and senior research specialist Caitlin McLean . "My hope is that the heightened awareness of this crisis prompts us to make a real change. Child care workers are among the lowest-paid workforce in the country. We have it backwards. The early years are critical for brain development. We need our best and brightest taking care of our youngest children." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Californians overwhelmingly support legislation that provides enhanced farmworker protections and gives hazard pay to essential workers, according to a poll released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. "The patterns continue to show that the coronavirus presents one of the greatest racial justice challenges of our time," IGS Co-Director G. Cristina Mora said in a statement supporting the study. "COVID-19 has exacerbated long-standing inequalities within the state. Communities of color are suffering disproportionately, both economically and socially, and the amount of fear and reported loss, especially among Latinos, is undeniable."

A new report by the Geneva-based Insecurity Insight and the University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center identified more than 1,100 threats or acts of violence against health care workers and facilities last year. Researchers found that about 400 of those attacks were related to COVID-19, many motivated by fear or frustration. "Our jobs in the emergency department and in hospitals have gotten exponentially more stressful and harder, and that's at baseline even when people are super supportive," said Rohini Haar, an emergency physician in Oakland, California, and Human Rights Center research fellow. "To do that work and to do it with commitment while being attacked or with the fear of being attacked is heartbreaking to me."

Early childhood educators across the country earn a median wage of $11.65 an hour, according to the 2020 Early Childhood Workforce Index from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley. Black early educators on average are paid $0.78 less per hour than their White peers, CSCCE reported. "This largely female workforce has been bearing the brunt of lack of investment for many years and many within this workforce have to turn to public assistance to get by. Even in the best of times, before the pandemic, early educators were already among the lowest paid workers in the country," said Caitlin McLean, author of the CSCCE report. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Another story on this topic appeared on CNBC.

In two American breadbasket communities, Moorefield, W. Va., and Salinas, Calif.,, small farmers and ranchers have been left to improvise as their markets swivel and contract. In its early months considered an urban problem, the coronavirus has been especially brutal in rural agricultural communities, where farmworkers were slow to get personal protective equipment and effective safety protocols. A recent University of California, Berkeley study shows that 13% of Salinas Valley farmworkers tested positive for the virus between July and November, compared with about 3% of Californians overall. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

A sizable number of the recipients of federal aid programs such as Medicaid and food stamps are employed by some of the biggest and more profitable companies in the United States, chief among them Walmart and McDonald's. "Wages at the bottom and middle of the income spectrum have been essentially flat since the late 1970s," said Ken Jacobs, chairman of U.C. Berkeley's Labor Center and a co-author of two Berkeley reports on the topic. "As productivity has increased, pay has stayed very low, and again, our federal minimum wage is well below where it would have been if it kept up with inflation and very far where it would have been if it kept up with productivity growth. So many families earn too little to get by on what they earn from their jobs."

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said this week that the state's residents could see the costs of ride-sharing as much as double if voters reject its ballot measure. UC Berkeley professor and economist Michael Reich disputes those figures. He estimates much smaller price increases would be needed and could be absorbed by Uber and Lyft, and now he has hard data from the companies' operations in New York City that shows single-digit percentage price increases after drivers there received increased wages as mandated by law.

Prop. 22 would create a new legal classification for Uber drivers, Instacart shoppers, and DoorDash deliverers — not quite employees, but not the independent contractors they've been until now. If the measure fails, the companies likely will have to recognize their workers as employees. Uber and Lyft have threatened to leave the state if that happens, or make big changes to their services, which would disrupt life for both drivers and customers. Uber suggests that the company would dismiss 75% of its drivers, mostly part-time workers, and that Uber fares would spike by 25% to 111%. But a report published this month by Michael Reich, a UC Berkeley economist who has played a key role in driver pay fights in New York and Seattle, casts doubt on Uber's numbers. Reich suggests the gig companies would use drivers more efficiently and save money on recruiting and retaining drivers, so fares would only rise by 5% to 10%. He finds that driver pay would increase by 30% if they were treated as employees rather than contractors.

Stubborn unemployment, a lengthening health crisis and California's high housing costs are putting unsustainable pressure on the state's most vulnerable homeowners and renters. More than 1 in 5 California residents surveyed said they lacked confidence they would be able to make rent or mortgage last month, according to new research by the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. "It paints a really compelling picture about how broad-based the pandemic has hit," said Carolina Reid of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. In particular, renters are feeling growing anxiety about making their monthly payments.

Uber and Lyft drivers are bracing for a shutdown in California, one of the rideshare companies' largest markets. Rideshare drivers around the U.S. are struggling to make ends meet, either continuing to work or relying on unemployment benefits from state systems that have struggled to keep up with backlogs and pay out full benefits. This is a row that involves real money. A report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center found Uber and Lyft would have paid $413 million into California's unemployment benefits system if drivers were classified as employees rather than independent contractors.

California workers who have lost their jobs during the pandemic are pessimistic about regaining their lost jobs. About 61% of the California workers who filed new unemployment claims during the week that ended on July 25 reported that they expected to be recalled by the employers who had laid them off or furloughed them, according to a report prepared by the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

A discussion with Lea Austin, co-director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, about why the child care industry is in financial trouble, and what can be done about it. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

White workers in U.S. retail and food-service industries are more likely to get regular shift work than other employees, according to a recent study. "What we find is that, pretty much across the board, white people have better schedules than workers of color," said Adam Storer, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of the study. Three-quarters of all respondents in a survey of more than 30,000 Americans said they had experienced one of the scheduling issues, according to Storer. But there were statistically significant gaps between white and nonwhite workers across all measures, and so-called precarious scheduling was worse for women than men.

Across Southern California's Inland Empire, warehouses for companies such as Amazon and Walmart have sprung up on what was a patchwork of ranches and tract housing, providing jobs for local residents. But warehouse workers are more likely to toil in dangerous conditions that put them at greater risk of infection. A recent report from the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, found that, nationwide, Latino and Black workers were far overrepresented in warehouse jobs.

Gig-economy companies such as Uber and Door Dash employ a method of commerce that treats millions of workers as disposable and deprives them of protections regular employees enjoy, like employer-paid health care. They are currently in court battling a new California state law that more narrowly defines which workers should be treated as contractors; a loss would mean new benefits outlays for the companies. These companies are also funding a California ballot proposal granting gig economy companies a specific carve-out, while guaranteeing modest wage minimums and benefits. A study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that, under the ballot proposal, hourly wages would be a meager $5.64 after factoring in driver down time and other expenses, such as fuel and vehicle maintenance.

Contrary to a popular myth that people on unemployment are less likely to seek out new jobs, a study by a team of researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley found that enhanced benefits have not necessarily stunted economic recovery. Individuals collecting benefits tend to receive better job offers than those who are not collecting benefits.

Uber and Lyft owe California $413 million in state unemployment insurance taxes, which they avoided paying by misclassifying drivers as independent contractors between 2014 and 2019, suggests a new report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center. According to Ken Jacobs, chair of UC Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education and a co-author of the study: "The companies have argued historically that because of the nature of the business -- 'anyone can drive when they want' -- that workers don't need access to unemployment insurance. This crisis has made it very clear that, in fact, they do. ... We have federal pandemic unemployment assistance, which does apply for independent contractors, but very few rideshare drivers will qualify for that assistance. If you qualify for regular unemployment, you cannot get the pandemic unemployment insurance -- 76 percent of labor platform workers have other W-2 work. That means for most drivers, their driving income won't count towards their unemployment and they will get much lower unemployment benefits if they continue to be considered independent contractors." A Link to the report is available here. Another story on this topic appeared in Law 360.