(Photo: City of Chattanooga Facebook)
What could Chattanooga do with another $95 million at our disposal? What could yours do?
As the leader of one of East Tennessee’s largest grantmaking organizations, I believe the money is out there; it’s just waiting for us to meet families where they are — and where they dream to be.
I know this because the data very clearly tells us so. For instance, at the end of 2022, Tennesseans for Quality Early Education found that “Hamilton County loses $94.4 million annually in lost earnings and revenue due to inadequate child care.” Statewide, that loss is $2.6 billion per year.
Parents point to the lack of support that prevents them from being able to work full time or take that next promotion. “Hamilton County parents lose $60.6 million in earnings each year because of that, and employers suffer losses of $18.6 million from lower productivity,” according to a report in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
All of which begs some bigger questions: Why are we losing so much of it? And what can we do as leaders to keep it in our communities?
Take child poverty: Tennessee ranks 49th in the nation for supporting struggling families, according to Vanderbilt University’s Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, and 36th in overall child well-being, per the Casey Foundation. Overall public health outcomes are similarly dire. Tennessee ranks 44th, according to America’s Health Rankings.
Looking deeper, we learn even more. United Way uses a metric called “ALICE” (Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed) to describe families who might earn enough to stay above the federal poverty line but still can’t meet basic household needs. In 2022, 1 in 3 Tennessee families fell below the ALICE threshold. Black households and single-female-headed households with children are especially vulnerable.
In Hamilton County alone, there are more than 9,500 households with children who are growing up in financial hardship. These families are working hard — sometimes at multiple jobs — but cannot free themselves from high living costs and low wages. It’s no shock that their economic productivity is lagging.
The need has never been greater for these 9,500 families, but I’ve never been more hopeful for our role as leaders. Last year, we launched United For Working Families, an initiative to raise awareness of these trends and reverse them. We can already see what the first steps in that reversal looks like.
Local employers are opening childcare centers on their campuses. Others have introduced a flexible three-day, 12-hour workweek, while some have added a 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift to help parents with school drop-offs and pickups. Bank of America provides up to 40 days of child and elder care along with service referrals. A Texas company called Plummer offers a $3,000 retention bonus for caregivers working at least 24 hours a week.
Granted, these are only the first steps — but they are encouraging and deserve commendation.
Some business owners will tell me that these kinds of investments are too expensive. In reality, the costs of lost productivity, high turnover, and chronic absenteeism far outweigh the costs of benefits that workers need and deserve. No business, no matter how small or new, is too early in its journey to start supporting its workers. Waiting until you “have more resources” isn’t an option if you want to build a strong and loyal team from the ground up.
We continue to work with our partners in local, state and federal government, but we’re also realistic: This is an election year and Tennessee’s families can’t afford to wait.
The private sector has a unique responsibility to lead. Through United Way’s United For Working Families initiative, we are mobilizing businesses across the state to make this change happen.