Childcare is workforce infrastructure

The hidden cost of the child care crisis — and the opportunity inside it

For years, the U.S. child care crisis has been framed primarily as a public-policy challenge. A new report from Moms First — Investing in child care: How U.S. businesses can unlock up to $70 billion by providing child care benefits — reframes it as something every CHRO, CFO, and people leader should already be treating as strategic priority: workforce infrastructure.

Developed with support from McKinsey & Company’s McKinsey Health Institute and funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the report draws on a national survey of ~1,700 working parents and quantifies just how much unstable child care is quietly costing American employers.

The answer? Up to $70 billion a year in lost workforce output — the equivalent of adding more than 1.2 million full-time workers to the U.S. economy, or twice the entire workforce of San Francisco.

At Wellthy, we see what that instability looks like every day. A daycare that closes with short notice. An after-care program that ends two hours before the shift does. A sick toddler at 4 a.m. before a board presentation that day. Pre-school waitlists that don't move. The months-long hunt for the right summer camp. And so much more.

That's child care instability becoming workforce disruption in real time for so many working families.

What the report shows about the shift-based workforce

The report’s central insight is that roughly 60% of the economic opportunity — $35 to $45 billion annually — sits with what Moms First calls the foundational workforce: the shift-based, operationally essential roles that power healthcare, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, transportation, education, and the trades. These are the registered nurses, teaching assistants, line workers, truck drivers, housekeepers, cashiers, and hotel team members who keep the American economy running.

Foundational workers account for about 80% of the U.S. workforce. They are also the workers most exposed when child care breaks down, because their margin for error is thinner: more fixed schedules and limited remote flexibility mean a single missed drop-off can cascade into missed shifts, lost income, and, eventually, attrition.

The Moms First research translates those disruptions into four distinct, quantifiable business costs: absenteeism ($18–21B), labor-force non-participation ($7–10B), attrition ($5–7B), and presenteeism ($5–7B). In industries like healthcare and manufacturing, foundational workers account for up to 90% of the employer opportunity — and yet, as of March 2025, fewer than 15% of private-sector workers have access to employer-provided child care benefits.

The ROI is already there — many times over

Perhaps the report’s most important message for HR and benefits leaders is that this is not theoretical. Moms First and McKinsey benchmarked 11 commonly deployed child care interventions and found that every single one delivered a positive return on investment. ROIs ranged from roughly 5% to 300% on a national-average basis, with individual company case studies reaching as high as 425%.

The highest returns cluster around flexibility (schedule control, remote and hybrid options, part-time pathways) and care navigation support, which alone showed an estimated ROI of 120–140%. Backup care, reserved slots, stipends, and near-site centers all pencil out too — especially when deployed in combination.

As Moms First notes, roughly 70% of parents prioritize quality of care over cost, interventions work better together than in isolation, and culture matters: benefits only deliver returns when employees actually feel they can use them without penalty.

How Hilton is putting it into practice — with Wellthy as part of the solution

One of the employers Moms First spotlights is Hilton, a longtime Wellthy client. With more than 500,000 team members across 140+ countries and 9,000+ hotels, Hilton operates in exactly the kind of 24/7, multi-site, hourly-heavy environment where caregiving disruptions are most expensive — and most invisible.

Hilton’s approach is to treat caregiving as part of the whole human experience at work. Through its partnership with Wellthy since 2022, team members are matched with a dedicated Care Coordinator who takes on time-intensive caregiving tasks — from helping arrange child care to finding teen mental health support to navigating insurance — so employees can stay focused when they’re on the clock.

The numbers speak for themselves. More than 3,500 team members have enrolled in Wellthy since launch, saving roughly 37,000 hours in the U.S. alone. Combined with Hilton’s broader people investments, the results include 85% of U.S. team members reporting they feel balanced and healthy at work, and 32% staying with the company for 10 or more years — extraordinary retention in an industry long defined by turnover.

“This investment is not just about providing a service; it’s about giving our team members back the most valuable resource: their time. We view this not as a cost, but as an investment in our culture, our people, and the communities we serve.” — Hilton, Chief Human Resources Officer, quoted in the Moms First report

Care is infrastructure. Wellthy is built for it.

The Moms First report lands on a conclusion we’ve believed since Wellthy’s founding: child care — and caregiving more broadly — is essential workforce infrastructure. It is as foundational to a functioning economy as roads or reliable energy.

For employers, the strategic question is how to design the right mix for their workforce. Care navigation, backup care, stipends, schedule flexibility, and provider partnerships all have a role, and the companies stitching them together thoughtfully are the ones converting hidden workforce losses into measurable, investable returns.

Read the full report

For the complete analysis — including methodology, industry-level opportunity sizing, and the full set of employer case studies (Chobani, Hilton, JBS, Simple Modern, and UAMS) — download “Investing in child care: How U.S. businesses can unlock up to $70 billion by providing child care benefits” from Moms First at momsfirst.us.