Montana's labor shortage and paid family leave: recruiting workers by supporting families.

• Author: Glover, Annie

In the next 10 years, at least 130,000 working Montanans will retire. With an aging population, Montana's labor force will only grow by 4,100 workers per year for the next 10 years (Wagner, 2015). Given current trends, there will simply not be enough workers to fill the projected annual job growth of 6,500 to continue to grow Montana's economy. Montana must find strategies to increase labor force participation so businesses have the workers they need.

Meanwhile, workers face pressures each day at home pressures that may be impacting their participation in the labor force. Parents leave the workforce when their children are young, often because of the prohibitively high cost of childcare. With average annual child care costs in Montana ranging from $9,062 for an infant to $6,815 for after-school care for a school-age child, it may not make economic sense for some parents to work outside the home (Childcare Aware, 2015).

Women also face an especially costly penalty in wages when they become mothers. According to research conducted by the Montana Equal Pay for Equal Work Task Force, mothers of young children make less than their female counterparts, women are much more likely to take time off to care for young children than men, and these long-term absences from work result in real skill loss and wage loss that affect workers for the rest of their careers (Figure 1). The American Association of University Women (AAUW) also has quantified the effect of motherhood on women's labor force participation and earnings, noting from their survey of workers "ten years after graduation, 23 percent of mothers were out of the workforce, and 17 percent worked part time. Among fathers, only 1 percent were out of the workforce, and only 2 percent worked part time" (AAUW, 2013).

Working parents of young children are not the only people affected by home demands. Providing care for an aging parent, disabled relative, or child with special health care needs may also pull a worker out of the labor force. Caregiving for a disabled or ill family member occurs in an estimated 22 million American households (Cannuscio, 2013). Furthermore, the majority of adults in America who serve as informal caregivers also work, with 61 percent of the adults caring for elderly family members and 53 percent of parents of children with special needs employed outside the home. These families experience an average wage loss of 29 percent due to their home caregiving demands (Earle...