Caregiving Crisis: 😬Disjointed thoughts to round out the year
Tripledemic, sandwich generation, midterm gratitude. Larry David gifs portray my feelings heading into year-end.
This issue is sponsored by CareForce: the driving force in reimagining how we care. Bringing together builders, storytellers, funders and leaders to create the infrastructure of care we all need for the 21st century. Learn more.
Hey everyone,
Rampant shootings, illnesses, days unworked. It has been a fraught few weeks on top of many more. We’ll get into all the news below. My head is all over the place lately and I have no cogent way to craft a lead essay. So! Here are my thoughts, as illustrated by Larry David gifs.1
Freaked out about the ‘tripledemic’ this season of flu, RSV and Covid-19, and ready to roll my eyes that it’s going to only make the caregiving crisis WORSE.
My tongue is coated in zinc as I write this. All these illnesses are colliding and set to be even more so this winter, particularly affecting children… and the parents who care for them. Some hospitals are “at their breaking point” because of unprecedented RSV levels and the flu. (CNBC) Already hearing about friends and friends of friends canceling trips because of RSV, and Thanksgiving because of Covid and the flu. The drag on working parents is real and eye-opening. More below.
Feeling tremendous empathy for sandwiched caregivers.
I flew home to Ohio the other week to be with my not-young parents as one was in the hospital. (Everyone’s fine-ish now.) I was very fortunate to A) have a job that allows me to work from anywhere and B) have a partner who C) shares equally in caregiving. If I didn’t have just even one of those factors, my week out of town to help my parents would have been impossible.
Working on my laptop from the hospital room2 while sitting in a wheelchair (great way to elevate the legs!), I couldn’t help but think of the trends unfolding. As the baby boomer generation ages (by 2030, all will be considered seniors), the drag on their children to care for them will only get worse because seniors are living longer and have less saved for retirement at a time when care is already in short supply. “There’s no safety net for the elder working class,” one sandwiched caregiver tells NYT. She had to quit her job to care for her two young children and her mother with dementia. Axios has a thorough and terrifying read about all the factors ahead for boomers and the toll it will take on society.
Grateful for the midterm outcome.
It could have been worse! Republican candidates with extreme views were not overwhelmingly elected (yay🤷 ). Yes, some candidates are advocating for "troubling violations of democratic norms" as researchers wrote in The Hill, but the election outcome shows "tepid support" for them: "The vast majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle don’t support violations of democratic norms." We'll look at election highlights below.
Sad, fearful, angry and angsty at the continued shootings across the U.S. and attacks on LGBTQ+ people.
No words.
No gifs.
When does it stop?
How does it stop?
Thanks for being here. Please message with your thoughts for future issues. We’re taking a Holiday Hiatus in December, and will be back on January 27th. Hope you find peace and calm this season, and maybe even quality leisure time that takes you away from the home. See you… in 2023! 🥳
What To Know About the Caregiving Crisis This Week
NEWS WATCH: ROUNDUP — Keeping tabs on legislation, regulation and conversation:
TRIPLEDEMIC 😨— With flu, RSV and Covid-19 colliding, and affecting kids at unprecedented rates, it’s no wonder that over 100,000 Americans missed work in October due to childcare problems, per Bureau of Labor Statistics as reported by Washington Post. That's an all-time high, worse than in 2020.
Sick kids + childcare crisis means "there just isn't any wiggle room," KPMG's chief economist told WaPo. This means lost wages, staffing shortages that hurt productivity and raise costs, in an era of already high inflation (Moody’s says the average household is spending $433 more a month, per CNBC.) For more on the ‘tripledemic’ check out NYT’s The Daily episode on how all these factors are colliding and why children are most at risk.
MIDTERM ELECTIONS: WE’LL TAKE IT — Seems like a million years ago now, but the outcomes were promising:
The Democrats staved off a ‘could have been worse’ midterm defeat. Thank younger voters, writes the director of polling at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Politics in the NYT. Voters ages 18-29 had their second-highest turnout in midterms in nearly 30 years. Had the election been decided by voters 45 and up, Republicans would have won the House by even bigger margins and taken the Senate. “Democrats retained the Senate, showing that an alliance of Gen Z and millennial voters answered history’s call to defend democracy,” John Della Volpe writes in an essay called “Republicans, Fear the Young.”
A record number of Black women ran for office this year and they "moved the needle forward in notable ways," the 19th reports. Much of the losses for Stacey Abrams (GA Democratic gubernatorial candidate), and others can be chalked up to money. They had the experience and qualifications, said Stefanie Brown James, co-founder of The Collective PAC, which supports progressive Black political candidates. “We’ve been saying day in and day out for years now, ‘We need early investments for these Black women candidates – Black candidates in general – but especially for Black women,’ who we know receive less financial contributions than a White woman or a White man running for these positions.”
CHILD TAX CREDIT MOMENTUM IN STATES — The temporary 2021 federal Child Tax Credit expansion seems increasingly likely not to be reinstated. But there is momentum for such relief on a state-level, as 10 states have some form of one now and many others are considering one, write researchers for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. These policies have transformative effects on child poverty rates — remember that the national one cut child poverty in HALF before it ROSE again after the credits were axed? And states, with minimal investment, could see similar results:
Researchers estimate that child poverty rates could be halved if states offered a base child tax credit of as little as $3,000 (plus a 20% boost for kids under 6).
In fact, two-thirds of states could halve child poverty by dedicating less than 5.5% of their total state revenue, in a targeted approach that directly benefits families experiencing low income.
"The amounts that states would need to invest to achieve sizeable cuts in child poverty, while significant, are within reach for states willing to commit the resources," researchers conclude.
Bottom line: Batten down the hatches for tripledemic. Consider sharing your caregiving stories with your employers, friends, whoever you can to normalize what is going on and call attention to the help that is so needed. These storms of illness and caregiving are coming for all of us.
QUANTIFYING THE CARE GAP — There is a "fundamental mismatch in supply and demand for care services in the world’s biggest economy," write Boston Consulting Group researchers in their continuing series on working caregivers. We all feel this mismatch (especially considering things like the RSV crisis discussed above), and now researchers have quantified what the gaps in the care economy cost the U.S. in GDP every year. According to BCG’s newest report, the U.S. will lose about $290 billion a year in GDP in 2030 and beyond if we do not fix "two critical care-economy dynamics" — A) the lack of available workers to fill "a dramatically increasing number of these hands-on jobs" and B) the departure of employees from the paid labor force to take on unpaid care duties, "whether they want to or not." The loss is equivalent of the annual revenue of Google owner Alphabet.
"Fixing the care problem in the U.S. now isn’t just good business, it’s necessary business." — BCG researchers
The $290 billion lost includes lost wages as so many care jobs go unfilled (some 1.8 million according to the latest BLS numbers). And it assumes some 20% of caregiving workers employed outside of the home will quit because they can’t find paid, adequate care. Several scenarios could play out, they said, at a possible cost of $500 billion a year.
Bottom line: Researchers say tackling five key issues can help address the economic burden: wages, training and recruitment, universal childcare, paid-care leave and workplace flexibility. And we can do that through changing culture at home, in the workplace and society. It is a long, slow, slog. The more we talk and tell our stories, the better it is.
IN THE SPIRIT OF GIVING: ADVICE TO EMPLOYERS — Ok we made that Thanksgiving tie-in. Katherine Goldstein, journalist and creator of the newsletter The Double Shift, gives a true gift to employers in a Harvard Business Review article that maps out exactly why and how they need to pay attention to caregivers.
"Companies have serious blindspots about their caregiver population and regularly make assumptions that can undermine their stated values and goals — along with their bottom line,” Katherine Goldstein writes in HBR.
Goldstein shares five myths about caregivers that employers should fix, such as that school and childcare are 'back to normal' and granting paternity leave makes policies inclusive. Both misconceptions can lead to burnout and fail to help families at all stages of their lives. The fact that companies feel caregiving isn't "talked about much at our office" does not mean it's not an issue, she writes. Just 56% of caregivers report their work supervisor is aware of their caregiving responsibilities.
"Many people are not comfortable sharing about their caregiving responsibilities in the workplace because they are worried about being penalized professionally," she writes.
Bottom line: Companies shouldn’t wait to react until they hear their policies are flawed. Because they won’t. Also, this labor market is too tight and working caregivers are so GOOD. Companies must be proactive in solving these problems and investing in employee resource groups as part of their DEI initiatives, Goldstein writes . This includes giving these groups budgets, development and training, compensate employees for this work and give them access to senior leaders. "Don’t think of ERGs as an inconsequential social club, but as having the potential to be a highly effective focus group that lets your company know its blind spots and helps come up with ideas for solving them," Goldstein writes.
Signing off
Thanks, as always, for reading. Please send feedback, favorite sandwiches and alternative names for ‘tripledemic.’ If you found value in Caregiving Crisis, please share with a friend. See you soon.
This issue is sponsored by CareForce: the driving force in reimagining how we care. Bringing together builders, storytellers, funders and leaders to create the infrastructure of care we all need for the 21st century. Learn more.
Caregiving Crisis is a newsletter written by Emily Fredrix Goodman. We aim to publish monthly but other things may get in the way.
Last Thanksgiving I did an all-Golden Girls edition and it was epic! This year, a theme was not as obvious. So I’m doing a mini-theme. I toyed with 90s sitcoms but with Fresh Prince/Will Smith didn’t want to go there. Thought about WWF wrestling, but the emotions weren’t exactly varied, and Alf, but meh. I’m in a Larry David mood lately so we’re going with it!
Putting down some MAJOR RESPECT for nurses here. WOW. I hadn’t spent so much time in a hospital (so lucky) and wow, nurses are the best of the best humans. The way they care, put their patients at ease, remember so many details and do SO MANY THINGS!!! — I’m in awe. Thank you to all the nurses. Heroes.