| DELIVERING ON DIVERSITY, GENDER EQUALITY, AND INCLUSION
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| In this issue, we consider the women doing paid care work in America. |
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| Ai-jen Poo is the cofounder and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. As she puts it from the podium: “We represent the 2.5 million women who work inside of our homes, who make everything else possible.” Who are these women? Who’s doing this work? More than half of US domestic workers are Black, Hispanic, Asian American, or Pacific Islander women—and for too long, Poo says, they have been “invisible.” Her advocacy began with a question: “Who’s taking care of them?” |
| Poo points to a stark figure: $18,000. That’s the typical annual pay of a home healthcare worker in the US. “It would be difficult,” a recent White House brief notes, “to sustain a family by running a care-providing business.” Poo points out the irony: “The professionals we count on to care for us can’t care for themselves and their own families by doing this work.”
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| Domestic workers sustain American families—and the US economy. A few stats for context: nearly one in four American children live with a single parent, and more than half of American families have two income earners. Meanwhile, 10,000 baby boomers are reaching retirement age each day; by 2040, more than one in five Americans will be 65 years or older. Most want to continue living in their current homes as they age, but they may not have access to long-term care.
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| Poo lays out the stakes: “We rely on a workforce of professionals to provide care as early childhood educators, childcare workers, home care workers, and personal-care aides. These are jobs that can’t be outsourced. They’re not going to be automated. And, right now, they’re poverty wage jobs with high rates of turnover because no one can survive on $18,000 a year. These are going to be a huge share of the jobs in the future, and we have got to make them good jobs.”
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| McKinsey research shows that domestic work is one of the top two areas (along with transportation) where net labor demand will increase the most following the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in demand for domestic work in the US by 2030 is expected to be 16 percentage points higher than prepandemic estimates. Globally, the rise in demand will principally be driven by occupations such as home health aides and childcare workers. |
| McKinsey analysis confirms that while automation can disrupt some domestic work—robot vacuums can help with the cleaning, for example—most tasks in this arena can’t be automated easily. As Poo points out in a conversation with strategist Heather McGhee, quality is essential to care—“and that quality is rooted in a human interaction and a human experience. The value is in the ability to support the human dignity of an older person or a person with a disability and the ability to nurture human potential.” |
| Poo is calling for the US to invest in care as infrastructure. She sets forth a vision of a world “where every single person, regardless of age or ability, can get access to the care that they need at every stage of life” and “where the lives and the contributions of women and women of color are valued, seen, respected, and protected.” That means ensuring access to affordable childcare, paid family and medical leave, and long-term care—including for those who provide it. |
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| — Edited by Julia Arnous, an editor in McKinsey’s Boston office |
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