Jobs in the Balance: The Two-Year Labor Market Impacts of Washington, DC’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund

This report evaluates the labor market impacts of Washington, DC’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund (PEF), a pioneering initiative to address pay disparities between child care and early childhood education (CCEE) educators and K–12 teachers. In its first two years, the PEF has delivered supplement payments ranging from $10,000 to $14,000 per year to more than 4,000 CCEE educators in licensed settings. Using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and a multiple-outcome synthetic control method, we found that after two years, the PEF had increased CCEE employment in Washington, DC by 219 educators, or about 7 percent relative to employment estimates in the absence of the PEF. We did not estimate significant impacts on the number of CCEE establishments, suggesting the PEF enabled existing establishments to increase staffing amidst documented staffing shortages in the sector. Near-zero effects on employer-reported wages were expected in the first two years of the program during which payments were disbursed directly to educators. We assess the robustness of these findings to several changes in the study design and technical approach.