The Skewed Market

Childcare is hard to find in Minnesota – a state where daycare costs are already among the highest in the nation, per-capita.

And it’s even harder in Greater Minnesota.

Eight months before her due date, Angie Steinbach started calling day cares to reserve a spot for her baby.

Nobody had an opening as far as Marshall or Willmar — both a 45-minute drive away. Steinbach got on waiting lists “behind people who hadn’t even conceived yet,” she said.

When Steinbach’s boy was born, her husband — who had just earned a degree in computers — planned to stay home with their son. The couple didn’t find a way for them both to work until a relative tipped them to an opening at a child care in Granite Falls.

“You just don’t realize until you actually experience it firsthand just how bad the shortage is,” said Steinbach, community development director for the city of Montevideo.

Large parts of rural Minnesota don’t have enough child care for working families. Finding a place for newborns is especially difficult.

The piece does a fairly useful job of citing the economic problems that the shortage is causing.

What it doesn’t do is explain how the DFL’s strategy of raising the cost and crimping the supply of childcare with its daycare union jamdown is going to help anything.

One thought on “The Skewed Market

  1. Lessee…we’ve got high daycare rates already, what happens when we bump up the price a couple of percent…..and quite frankly, flaky daycare is ALREADY one of the biggest complaints outstate manufacturers have.

    I’m thinking any town outside Minnesota along the old Great Northern or DM&E lines, or anywhere near I-94, I-90, or I-80 between Lake Michigan and the Rockies, is rooting for Minnesota daycare unionization, if you catch my drift.

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