Thousands of nurses recently went on strike in New York City to push for better staffing as hundreds of nursing roles remain unfilled, stretching nurses to their limits. This staffing shortage hurts patients and reduces the quality of care. And while New York City is facing hundreds of unfilled nursing positions, nationally we are talking about a shortage of more than 200,000 nurses.
The nursing shortage is the most visible example of the enormous labor shortages across care economy careers. But the problem is much bigger. Care workers–physicians, home health aides, early childhood care workers, physician assistants, and more–face critical challenges as a result of America’s immense care gap that may soon touch every corner of the American economy.
All Americans should care about this care worker gap. New research from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that 56% of U.S. workers have care responsibilities outside of their full-time jobs. 90 million American workers are providing unpaid care on top of their day jobs, with women doing twice as much of this unpaid care work as men. When there are staffing shortages in the paid care workforce, unpaid caregivers need to step up–which often leads them to step out of their full-time jobs, leaving gaps in staffing behind. This is happening at a rate so fast that caregiving responsibilities have become the number two reason (behind retirement) why an employee leaves the workforce.
The research went on to find that in 2030 and beyond, the U.S. could lose roughly $290 billion in GDP each year because of this growing care crisis. Paid and unpaid workers work in tandem to take care of those we love. When care worker shortages grow as intensely as they are, we will see an outflow of talent from other parts of the labor market that will have massive economic and societal impacts.
The underlying reasons for our current care crisis have deep roots and won’t change overnight–but we can all take steps to mend labor shortages and help alleviate the care gap.
Employers
For the business community, it comes down to this: If you want to retain your employees and prevent labor gaps, your mantra needs to become “caregiving support = employee retention.”
Providing a modern package of benefits that acknowledges caregivers in the workforce, especially sandwich generation employees (those taking care of both children and parents), will prevent many workers from having to choose between caring for a loved one and staying on the job.
Technology
Startups have leveraged technology to make caregiving more efficient, less stressful, and unlock more resources for families and workers. Tech companies are now fulfilling needs such as supporting the emotional and mental well-being of healthcare workers, upskilling and credentialing caregivers, automating time-intensive administrative hospital tasks, and so much more. Innovation provides some of the most hopeful solutions to solving America’s care crisis.
Government
Caregiving responsibilities are unaffected across partisan divides–and there are common-sense solutions that lawmakers could prioritize today to ease America’s care crisis. For example, we need to create an immigration pathway for home health care aides. More than 27% of home-based care workers are immigrants, and with estimates that the U.S. will need nearly 4.5 million more home healthcare workers over the next decade, fixing this barrier will be critical.
Additionally, the Biden administration has doubled the number of scholarships for nursing school candidates who work in places with staff shortages. This is a positive step, but we need to incentivize recruitment across other areas of care.
We can close the care gap and create a more equitable workforce overall–but it will take dedication and prioritization across society. We will not solve nursing strikes, labor shortages in critical industries, or instability in the economy until we invest in broader care activities–and that would take an overall cultural shift in how we prioritize caregiving.
Lindsay Jurist-Rosneris the CEO and co-founder of Wellthy. Elana Berkowitz is a co-founder and partner at Springbank Collective.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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