A Preventable Labor Crisis in Long-Term Care
by PHI
Who Will Care for Our Loved Ones in the 21st Century?
We are in the midst of a growing nationwide shortage of direct-care workers — home health aides, certified nursing assistants and personal care attendants — and, thus, providers cannot meet the long-term care needs of millions of Americans who are elderly, chronically ill, or living with disabilities. Why?
Experienced caregivers do not receive a livable wage from these jobs.
These positions—which are administered mostly by the private sector, but paid for primarily with public Medicare and Medicaid dollars—typically offer poverty-level wages, few benefits, little training or support, and no opportunities for advancement.
Fewer new workers are entering these jobs.
In today’s economy, many less-skilled, entry-level jobs pay better than positions in long-term care—an employment sector in which wage and benefit levels respond primarily to changes in public policy, not shifts in market demand. In addition, many of the low-income women who once entered these positions through welfare-to-work job training programs can no longer do so because of stringent “work first” policies that will not support home health aide / CNA certification training as a pre-employment activity.
There are fewer women to comprise the “caregiving workforce.”1
 Over
90% of our country’s long-term care workers are women aged
25 to 44 years. Yet
the number of American women in the civilian labor force in this
age bracket is now decreasing.
Click on the chart for a larger image. |
Increasing numbers of people are in need of long-term care.
 Even
as the number of potential caregivers is decreasing, the number of
people requiring their services—and the intensity of the day-to-day
care required by people who are now living longer, but with greater
need of assistance—is growing dramatically.
If public policy is going to ensure the availability and quality of long-term care in this country, then it must deal with this ever-widening gap within our nation’s long-term care delivery system: that is, the growing need for a stable, experienced and well-trained direct-care workforce. Click on the chart for a larger image |
See: A Preventable Labor Crisis Part II: The Potential for a Solution.asing numbers of people are in need of long-term care.
[1.] The looming shortage of women aged 25 through 44 in the civilian workforce was first noted by Dorothy Foltz-Gray in an article entitled “The Disappearing Worker,” Contemporary Long Term Care, October 1997.
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