Understanding the Child Care and Early Education Workforce: The Need for More and Better Data. BASE Knowledge Review Series. OPRE Report 2023-190

High-quality, stable child care and early education (CCEE) can have lasting, positive impacts on children. However, the challenges of recruiting, strengthening, and retaining the CCEE workforce are well documented. CCEE educators typically have low levels of formal education and compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. Additionally, the CCEE sector is well known for high turnover rates, which can strain remaining educators and decrease the quality of care they offer. Turnover can also lead to diminishing returns on an organization's professional development investments. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues. The Building and Sustaining the Child Care and Early Education Workforce (BASE) project conducted an environmental scan and a literature review to identify and document existing knowledge about the CCEE workforce and strategies to strengthen it. One of the main themes identified from this effort was a need for more and better data on the workforce dynamics of CCEE educators. In particular, data are needed on who enters, advances in, stays in, and exits different roles, settings, and types of CCEE care or leaves the field altogether--as well as when, how, and why they do. This information is important for understanding workforce dynamics and informing the development, evaluation, and improvement of strategies that effectively build and sustain a qualified and stable CCEE workforce. For this reason, the BASE project team conducted a data scan to summarize the landscape of existing data sources that may address these gaps and identify areas where future data collection may be most useful. This brief summarizes the findings from the data scan.