Recruiting and Retaining Staff in the Early Childhood Workforce - A Summary of Minnesota and National Literature

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bintang

Recruiting and retaining qualified early childhood education (ECE) staff depends on teachers with strong skills and supportive environments, yet low pay and inadequate working conditions undermine educators’ ability to apply their knowledge. The paper reviews Minnesota-focused and national literature on workforce instability, burnout, and stress, noting that COVID-19 intensified existing challenges. It uses targeted evaluation questions and interviews planned for spring/summer 2024 to identify staffing barriers and strategies across individual, center, regional, and societal levels.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Evaluation scope and guiding questions

Literature review and key informant interviews

Individual-level stressors on ECE recruitment and retention

Inadequate pay for the job

Recruiting and Retaining Staff in the Early Childhood Workforce A Summary of Minnesota and National Literature “There is broad consensus that high-quality environments for young children depend on teachers who are skilled at nurturing their development and learning, yet low pay and inadequate working conditions routinely hamper teachers in their efforts to apply their skills and knowledge. This condition exists among teachers in early education as well as K-12 classrooms, fueling the ubiquitous challenge of recruiting and retaining a skilled teaching workforce across the age spectrum” (Whitebook et al., 2018). Much of the literature on the early childhood education (ECE1) workforce discusses the crisis of recruiting and retaining quality educators to a sector that is essential to American life, but that has unsustainable wage levels and high rates of burnout (Swigonski et al., 2021). While issues of low wages and stress are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly exacerbated existing instabilities. Given the size of the workforce—Wilder estimates over 40,000 early childhood educators in Minnesota (Valorose et al., 2023)—and its profound impact on Minnesotans of all ages, it is critical to address recruitment and retention challenges. Like many ECE centers, Wilder’s Child Development Center has experienced challenges with recruiting, hiring, and retaining staff over the years, and especially in the wake of the pandemic. To understand the mostrecent challenges and opportunities for the workforce, Child Development Center staff asked Wilder Research to conduct an evaluation including: 1) a review and summary of existing literature, and 2) key informant interviews with child care centers and training programs. Wilder Research and Child Development Center staff identified the following questions to guide the evaluation. 􀂄 What kinds of staffing challenges are ECE centers dealing with, particularly in the Twin Cities metroarea? How prevalent are these challenges? Are they more prevalent in certain areas or types of centers? 􀂄 What are the key factors contributing to staffing challenges? What barriers exist at the individual, center, regional, and societal/economic levels? (e.g., are centers not getting applicants in general? Or are they not getting qualified applicants?) 􀂄 What strategies or approaches seem to be effective at recruiting and retaining ECE staff in this current climate? 􀂄 What does the landscape in the Twin Cities metro look like in terms of who is being prepared for early childhood positions? How many people are graduating from ECE programs? What are graduates looking for? Answers to these questions will come from both the literature review and the key informant interviews. The following report is a summary of key themes from the literature, organized roughly by research question. Wilder focused in particular on projects, evaluations, and data that are specific to Minnesota. Key informant interviews will take place in spring/summer 2024. 1 Throughout this summary, ECE is used to abbreviate “early childhood education,” though many sources also use ECE to mean “early care and education.” Individual-level stressors on recruiting and retaining ECE workers “Early educators are engaged in incredibly difficult and complex work that has been recognized as essential to children’s learning and development, supportive for families, and foundational to the economy. In the best of times, educators do this work in conditions that undermine their well-being, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened the harm caused to this workforce, nearly all of whom are women. Adequate public investment and state policies that appropriately prepare, support, and compensate the early education workforce can remedy these dire conditions by establishing systems that benefit early educators and the children they care for and teach”(Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, 2021). Extensive literature on the early ch

FAQs

Why is recruiting and retaining early childhood educators challenging, according to the report?

Low pay and inadequate working conditions repeatedly hinder educators’ ability to remain in the field. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these instabilities, contributing to widespread stress and burnout.

What factors does the report say contribute to staffing challenges across levels?

The evaluation considers barriers at the individual, center, regional, and societal/economic levels, including whether centers struggle to attract applicants in general or to find qualified applicants specifically.

What does the report plan to do to answer its recruitment and retention questions?

Answers will come from both a literature review and key informant interviews with child care centers and training programs, with interviews planned for spring/summer 2024.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bintang