From a purely economic perspective, an important part of the initial response to the impact of COVID-19 is recognizing and understanding the barriers or complications preventing working parents from reentering the workforce.
No one knows exactly when the county’s K-12 school system will be back to fully on-campus learning. While certainly not referring to schools as babysitters, schools do provide structured times where children are legally required to be in attendance. This allows working parents with children under the age of 18 an opportunity to work without having to worry about childcare expenses.
While older children do not need childcare, working parents still need to make plans – even if they are as simple as going to a neighbor or friends house, or heading home and calling to report all is well. Families with older children might have less to plan out and likely pay less than families with younger children but working parents of older children still likely have an overlap with typical non-school hours such as from 3:00 to 5:00 pm.
The societal definition of family is very broad, mirroring how families see themselves and much less how others see them. But for this information to be relevant and comparable, there needs to be clear definitions. As defined by the U.S. Census:
- “A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit.”
- “A family is a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together; all such people (including related subfamily members) are considered as members of one family.”
Basically, family uses a narrower definition than household excluding college dorms and other non-family shared housing units. In an area with a high number of transient college students, it creates a better estimate focusing on just the relevant population.
The number of families with one or more working parent and one or more children under the age of 18 provides insight into reopening the local economy – especially on creating workable scenarios helping family members out of their homes and back into the workforce.
This indicator measures the estimated total number and share of families with one or more working parents having one or more children under the age of 18 in Walla Walla and Columbia Counties combined. Washington State and the U.S. are offered as benchmarks. Additional information, including the estimated total number of workforce-strained families in the state and U.S., can be found in the “Download Data” section.
According to the US Census Bureau, the pandemic made the collection of accurate one-year estimates for the American Community Survey (ACS) impossible in 2020. Five-year estimates might be available for popular series in early 2022.