Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Israel opposes Biden plan to reopen U.S. Palestinian mission in Jerusalem

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel said on Wednesday that a U.S. plan to reopen its consulate in Jerusalem that has traditionally been a base for diplomatic outreach to Palestinians is a “bad idea” and could destabilize Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s new government.

The prior administration of President Donald Trump signaled support for Israel’s claim on Jerusalem as its capital by moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. It later subsumed the consulate, in west Jerusalem, in that mission.

It was among several moves that incensed the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as capital of a hoped-for, future state.

President Joe Biden has pledged to restore ties with the Palestinians, back a two-state solution and move forward with reopening the consulate. It has been closed since 2019, with Palestinian affairs handled by the embassy.

“We think it’s a bad idea,” Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told a news conference when asked about the reopening. “Jerusalem is the sovereign capital of Israel and Israel alone, and therefore we don’t think it’s a good idea.

“We know that the (Biden) administration has a different way of looking at this, but since it is happening in Israel, we are sure they are listening to us very carefully.”

Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official, told Reuters that the Israeli rejection of the consulate’s opening was expected, adding: “They are trying to maintain the status quo and block any political solution”.

Asked about Lapid’s remarks, a U.S. Embassy spokesperson said: “As Secretary Blinken announced in May, the United States will be moving forward with the process to reopen our consulate in Jerusalem. We do not have additional information to share at this time.”

The spokesperson said the United States was not reversing its decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem nor its recognition of the city as Israel’s capital.

Israel captured the city’s east, along with the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in the 1967 Middle East war.

It deems all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital – a status not recognized internationally. In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, Trump said he was not taking a position on “any final-status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem”.

Bennett, a nationalist atop a cross-partisan coalition, opposes Palestinian statehood. Reopening the consulate could unsettle Bennett’s government, which ended long-term premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure in June, Lapid said.

“We have an interesting and yet delicate structure of our government and we think this might destabilize this government and I don’t think the American administration wants this to happen,” he said.

Divisions among Palestinians also cast doubt about the prospects for diplomacy, Lapid said. “I am a devoted believer in the two-state solution … but we’ll have to admit the fact this is not feasible in the current situation.”

(Writing by Rami Ayyub;Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Jonathan Oatis)

Majority of Afghan allies may have missed out on airlift – U.S. official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States may have left behind the majority of Afghans who helped in the 20-year war effort along with their families as U.S. citizens were prioritized in the airlift that came to an end this week, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday.

The departure of the last U.S. military flights out of Kabul on Monday marked the end of an operation that saw more than 123,000 people brought out of Afghanistan in less than two weeks.

President Joe Biden has pledged to keep helping 100 to 200 U.S. citizens left in the country who wanted to leave and a much larger group of at-risk Afghans, including former interpreters for the U.S. military.

Asked how many potential applicants to the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program for Afghan allies and their families remained in Kabul, a senior State Department official said they could not provide an estimate.

“But I would say it’s the majority of them just based on anecdotal information about the populations we were able to support,” the official said. About 2,000 SIV applicants were brought to the United States before the broader airlift began in mid-August.

Initial efforts to prioritize those Afghans for evacuation were marred by security concerns at the airport gates and difficulties in giving them credentials that could not be replicated, the official said.

U.S. officials had a legal obligation to help American citizens who were stuck in Kabul and prioritized their departure, the official said. About 5,500 U.S. citizens were on evacuation flights from Kabul after Aug. 14, according to the State Department.

“Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help depart in this first phase of the operation,” the official said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Arshad Mohammed and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Colorado police officers, paramedics charged in 2019 death of Black man

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) -Three Colorado police officers and two paramedics have been criminally charged in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who died in 2019 after he was subdued and injected with a sedative, the state attorney general said on Wednesday.

McClain, 23, was confronted by police in the Denver suburb of Aurora as he was walking home from a convenience store on reports he was acting suspiciously, although he was not suspected of a crime.

Police placed McClain in a carotid neck hold and was later injected by paramedics with ketamine, a powerful sedative. He went into cardiac arrest and died days later at a hospital.

A state grand jury handed up a 32-count indictment, including manslaughter and assault charges, Attorney General Phil Weiser said at a news conference.

The case drew national attention after George Floyd, a Black man, died in May 2020 when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. The case, which resulted in a murder conviction and a 22 1/2-year sentence for Derek Chauvin, galvanized a protest movement against the unjustified deaths of Black people at the hands of law enforcement.

“Nothing will bring back my son, but I am thankful that his killers will finally be held accountable,” McClain’s father, LaWayne Mosley, said in a statement after the announcement of the indictments.

(Reporting By Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller)

‘Everybody screwed up’: Blame game begins over turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan

By Idrees Ali, Patricia Zengerle and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A week into the evacuation from Kabul, the U.S. military was forced to take a drastic step: stop all flights from Hamid Karzai International Airport for seven hours because there was nowhere for the evacuees to go.

For months, military officials had urged the U.S. State Department to convince other countries to take Afghans at risk from Taliban retaliation. They had largely failed to secure agreements with other countries, prompting officials across the U.S. government to rush to try to find space for the evacuees.

The Biden administration’s scramble was emblematic of failures over the past month, which culminated with a hastily organized airlift that left thousands of U.S.-allied Afghans behind and was punctuated by a suicide bombing outside Kabul’s airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghans.

The chaotic end to America’s longest war has sparked the biggest crisis of President Joe Biden’s seven months in the White House, finger-pointing within the administration and questions about who, if anyone, would be held responsible.

Despite the missteps, the administration carried out one of the largest airlifts in history, evacuating more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and people of other nationalities amid the threat of attacks by Islamic State militants.

The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan on Monday.

Current and former officials and lawmakers said there is little appetite for Biden to fire or demote top advisers over the handling of the U.S. withdrawal. The Democratic president, meanwhile, has strongly defended his administration’s actions.

Frustrated and angry, officials at the Pentagon have privately blamed the lack of urgency leading up to the airlift on the State and Homeland Security departments, who in turn have blamed the White House for slow decision-making.

“Finger-pointing is an ugly Washington sport … in this case, fingers could be pointed in all directions and probably be right in each case,” said Dan Fried, a former senior U.S. diplomat now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“A failure like this is collective. Everybody screwed up,” Fried added.

A source familiar with the matter defended the evacuation planning and said the State Department was unaware of any concerns at the Department of Defense about a lack of urgency in the effort.

White House officials told Reuters that firings have not been discussed, but the administration expects Congress to aggressively investigate the turbulent exit from Afghanistan in hearings.

One Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said any dismissal would be seen as a tacit admission that the president had erred in removing troops unconditionally from the South Asian nation.

Biden, in a defiant speech on Tuesday, defended his decision to withdraw the troops and stood by the evacuation plan.

“Some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and ‘Couldn’t this have be done – have been done in a more orderly manner?’ I respectfully disagree,” said Biden, who noted that he was ultimately responsible for the withdrawal.

POLITICAL DECISION

Biden’s party narrowly controls the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and aides in both chambers said that, while Democrats would investigate and expect to hold hearings, they are wary of giving Republicans a platform to attack the president.

Democratic congressional committee leaders have pledged thorough reviews of the events in Afghanistan, but they made clear they intend to look into the entire 20-year conflict, which unfolded under the watch of four presidents, starting with Republican President George W. Bush.

On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the administration has provided many classified and unclassified briefings to lawmakers.

“Now, it’s a 20-year war, so there’s obviously a lot to dig into,” she said.

Democrats want to pursue Biden’s domestic agenda – expanding social programs, funding infrastructure and protecting voting rights. On the national security front, they want to highlight their investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

How Congress eventually proceeds will depend on the level of interest from voters.

Less than 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said last month that the Biden administration would conduct a “hotwash” – an after-action review – to discover what went wrong in Afghanistan, and that he expected results of that review to be made public.

White House officials said on Tuesday the review had not begun.

WHO IS TO BLAME?

The last month in Afghanistan was a series of failures, from the intelligence and military to diplomatic and immigration fronts, with one core error the failure to anticipate the speed of the Taliban’s advance and collapse of the Afghan military.

“In some way, everyone is to blame,” a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Some Republicans have pointed fingers at Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as the ones most responsible for setting the conditions for a chaotic evacuation, and have demanded their departure.

Republicans also have called for Biden to fire the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the Trump administration’s 2020 deal with the Taliban that set the stage for the withdrawal.

But when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was asked whether he thought Biden or Blinken should be impeached, the California Republican did not answer, saying instead his focus was on getting the Americans out of Afghanistan.

Defense officials told Reuters the State Department appeared out of touch with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan and had too much confidence in the Afghan government.

During a congressional hearing in June, Blinken was asked if the administration was considering getting at-risk Afghans out of the country while their cases were being reviewed.

“If there is a significant deterioration in security, that could well happen, we discussed this before, I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday,” Blinken said.

The Taliban seized two of Afghanistan’s three largest cities – Kandahar and Herat – on Friday, Aug. 13 and took Kabul, the capital, two days later.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Patricia Zengerle, Arshad Mohammed, Humeyra Pamuk, Jarrett Renshaw. Editing by Mary Milliken, Phil Stewart and Paul Simao)

Lebanon in free fall, must not become ‘horror story,’ U.S. senator warns

By Maha El Dahan

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon is in free fall and must not become a “horror story,” a U.S. senator said during a visit to Beirut on Wednesday, voicing hope that a government would be formed this week to start addressing its destabilizing financial meltdown.

The comment reflected growing concern about the situation in Lebanon, where a financial collapse that began in 2019 hit a crunch point last month with a crippling fuel shortage that sparked security incidents and warnings of worse to come.

Another senator in the U.S. congressional delegation said Iranian fuel being shipped to Lebanon by the heavily armed Shi’ite group Hezbollah would come with strings attached, dismissing it as an attempted “photo-op by the Iranians.”

The financial crisis marks the biggest threat to Lebanon’s stability since the 1975-90 civil war.

More than half of Lebanon’s 6 million people have fallen into poverty. The World Bank says it is one of the sharpest depressions of modern times, with the currency plunging more than 90% and the financial system paralyzed.

“Lebanon is in free fall…We’ve seen this movie before and it’s a horror story…, but the good news is it can, should, and hopefully will be avoided,” Senator Richard Blumenthal told reporters at the end of a two-day visit.

Lebanese politicians, who have failed to do anything to arrest the collapse, have been squabbling for more than a year over the make-up of a new cabinet to replace the one that quit in the aftermath of the Aug. 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion.

A new cabinet capable of implementing reforms is a necessary precursor to foreign aid. The United States is the biggest foreign aid donor to Lebanon.

The congressional delegation met Lebanese leaders including President Michel Aoun, the Maronite Christian head of state, who expressed hope the government would be formed this week, the presidency said in a statement.

Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, has on several occasions expressed optimism about the government being agreed soon.

“We did hear good news today,” Senator Chris Murphy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee panel dealing with the Middle East, told reporters, adding he expected a government would be formed by the time he returned home.

Aoun’s adversaries accuse him and his faction, the Free Patriotic Movement, of obstructing the government formation by demanding a third of the seats, or effective veto power.

Aoun denies this. Aoun told the senators “many obstacles had been overcome,” the presidency said.

‘STRINGS ATTACHED’

With the state floundering, Hezbollah, long part of the ruling system, last month announced it was importing fuel oil from Iran, saying it aims to ease the crisis. Its adversaries have said this further undermined the authority of the state and exposed Lebanon to the risk of U.S. sanctions.

Washington designates Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

Lebanon’s caretaker energy minister said on Wednesday that an import permit had not been requested for the fuel shipment.

The United States has been in talks with Egypt and Jordan over a plan to ease Lebanon’s power crisis. The Lebanese presidency has said it involves using Egyptian gas to generate power in Jordan that would be transmitted via Syria, which is under U.S. sanctions including the so-called Caesar act.

“The complication as you know is the transport via Syria,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen. “We are (urgently) looking for ways to address that despite the Caesar act.”

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Biden vows to protect Roe v. Wade after Texas abortion law takes effect

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden condemned the Texas law that went into effect on Wednesday which prohibits the vast majority of abortions in the state, and pledged his administration would fight to protect the constitutional right to abortion as laid out in the landmark Roe v. Wade case.

“The Texas law will significantly impair women’s access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes,” Biden said in a statement. “And, outrageously, it deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion.”

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert, Editing by Franklin Paul)

U.S. manufacturing activity rises; shortages linger

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON(Reuters) – U.S. manufacturing activity unexpectedly picked up in August amid strong order growth, but a measure of factory employment dropped to a nine-month low, likely as workers remained scarce.

The survey from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) on Wednesday continued to highlight persistent problems securing enough raw materials, a situation worsened by disruptions caused by the latest wave of COVID-19 infections, primarily in Southeast Asia, as well as ports congestion in China.

“A surprising turn of events for manufacturing activity in the U.S., but it doesn’t change the story of supply disruptions and shortages holding back stronger growth,” said Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.

The ISM said its index of national factory activity inched up to 59.9 last month from a reading of 59.5 in July. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in manufacturing, which accounts for 11.9% of the U.S. economy. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index falling to 58.6.

Manufacturing is holding up even as spending is rotating back to services from goods because of vaccinations against COVID-19. All of the six largest manufacturing industries, including computer and electronic products, chemical products and transportation equipment reported moderate to strong growth.

Manufacturers of computer and electronic products said while a global semiconductor shortage was impacting supply lines, they had so far “been able to manage it without impacting clients.”

Chemical goods producers said they continued to “see extended lead times due to port delays and sea container tightness.” Transportation equipment makers reported that “strong sales continue, but production is limited due to supply issues with chips.”

The ISM survey’s forward-looking new orders sub-index rebounded to a reading of 66.7 last month after two straight monthly declines. Fourteen out of 18 manufacturing industries, furniture and related products, machinery and electrical equipment, appliances and components reported growth in new orders. Only nonmetallic mineral products reported a drop.

Demand is being driven by businesses desperate to replenish stocks after inventories were drawn down sharply in the first half of the year. Inventory accumulation, which is expected to be the main driver of economic growth for the rest of this year and into 2022, has been frustrated by the supply constraints.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar slipped against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were mixed.

INFLATION ABATING

Scarce inputs have boosted prices for both manufacturers and consumers. But there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. The ISM measure of delivery performance of suppliers to manufacturing organizations eased further in August, indicating some improvement in the pace of deliveries.

The survey’s measure of prices paid by manufacturers fell to an eight-month low of 79.4 from a reading of 85.7 in July. This measure has dropped from a record 92.1 in June.

It was the latest indication that inflation has probably peaked. Data last week showed the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure recorded its smallest monthly gain in five months in July.

But worker shortages persist, with ISM chair Timothy Fiore highlighting “a clear cycle of labor turnover as workers opt for more attractive job conditions.”

A measure of factory employment contracted last month and fell to its lowest level since November.

Together with the ADP National Employment Report, which showed on Wednesday that private payrolls increased by 374,000 jobs last month after rising 326,000 in July, the ISM factory index poses a downside risk to job growth in August. Economists had forecast the ADP report would show private payrolls increased by 613,000 jobs.

The ADP report is jointly developed with Moody’s Analytics and was published ahead of the Labor Department’s more comprehensive and closely watched employment report for August on Friday. But it has a dismal record predicting the private payrolls count in the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report because of methodology differences.

According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 728,000 jobs last month after rising 943,000 in July.

“ADP is far from consistent in predicting changes in the BLS payrolls data,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency economics in White Plains, New York. “Overall, job growth has strengthened in recent months, even as companies continue to report labor supply shortages.”

The pandemic has upended the labor market dynamics, creating worker shortages even as 8.7 million people are officially unemployed. The were a record 10.1 million job openings at the end of June. Lack of affordable child care, fears of contracting the coronavirus, generous unemployment benefits funded by the federal government as well as pandemic-related retirements and career changes have been blamed for the disconnect.

The labor shortage is expected to ease starting in September. The government-funded unemployment benefits lapse on Sept. 6 and schools are reopening for in-person learning.

But the resurgence in new COVID-19 cases, driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, could cause reluctance among some people to return to the labor force.

The labor shortages led to a building up of the backlog of uncompleted work at factories in August.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Drought may force Brazil to ration power, says Vice President Mourao

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao said on Wednesday a severe drought could lead to energy rationing in Brazil, contradicting other officials who have said that such a step would not be necessary.

Brazil, one of the world’s agricultural superpowers, is suffering from one of its worst droughts in a century. The lack of rainfall has emptied hydroelectric reservoirs, fanned inflation and hurt farmers. The government has given incentives to use less energy but says rationing is not expected.

“There may have to be some rationing,” Mourao told reporters in Brasilia, although he said the government had taken necessary measures to prevent blackouts.

Brazil’s Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque on Tuesday said the country’s energy crisis was worse than previously thought. In a televised national address, Albuquerque said Brazil had lost hydropower output equal to the energy consumed by the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest, in five months.

Separately on Tuesday, the ministry announced it would once again raise energy prices, with affected consumers paying on average 6.78% more for electricity starting on Sept. 1.

The meteorological outlook remains grim for Brazil. Rainfall in energy-producing regions is likely to remain well below average in September, the national grid operator ONS said last week.

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro and Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia; editing by Barbara Lewis)

New era for Afghanistan starts with long queues, rising prices

By James Mackenzie

(Reuters) – As Kabul began a new era of Taliban rule, long queues outside banks and soaring prices in the bazaars underlined the everyday worries now facing its population after the spectacular seizure of the city two weeks ago.

For the Taliban, growing economic hardship is emerging as their biggest challenge, with a sinking currency and rising inflation adding misery to a country where more than a third of the population lives on less than $2 a day.

Even for the relatively well-off, with many offices and shops still shut and salaries unpaid for weeks the daily struggle to put food on the table has become an overwhelming preoccupation.

“Everything is expensive now, prices are going up every day,” said Kabul resident Zelgai, who said tomatoes which cost 50 afghani the day before were now selling for 80.

In an effort to get the economy moving again, banks which closed as soon as the Taliban took Kabul have been ordered to re-open. But strict weekly limits on cash withdrawals have been imposed and many people still faced hours of queuing to get at their cash.

Outside the city, humanitarian organizations have warned of impending catastrophe as severe drought has hit farmers and forced thousands of rural poor to seek shelter in the cities.

People huddling in tent shelters by roadsides and in parks are a common sight, residents said.

In a cash-based economy heavily dependent on imports for food and basic necessities and now deprived of billions of dollars in foreign aid, pressure on the currency has been relentless.

The afghani was recently valued at around 93-95 to the dollar in both Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, compared with around 80 just before the fall of the city. But the rate is only an indicator, because normal money trading has dried up.

In the Pakistani city of Peshawar, close to the border, many money traders are refusing to handle the Afghan currency, which has become too volatile to value properly.

Only the sheer scarcity of cash has kept it from falling further, with international shipments of afghanis and dollars yet to resume.

“In the bazaar you can exchange for a bit over 90 but it goes up and down because it’s not official,” said one trader. “If they open the exchanges again it will go up over 100, I’m sure of it.”

STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS

The fall in the exchange rate has seen prices for many basic foodstuffs ratchet up daily, squeezing people who have seen their salaries disappear and their savings put out of reach by the closure of banks.

Kabul market traders said a 50 kg bag of flour was selling for 2,200 afghanis, around 30% above its price before the fall of the city, with similar rises for other essentials like cooking oil or rice. Prices for vegetables were up to 50% higher, while petrol prices were up by 75%.

Remittances from abroad have also been cut off by the closure of money transfer operators like Western Union, and increasing numbers of people have been trying to sell jewelry or household goods, even if they have to accept a fraction of their value.

“Two weeks ago, people were buying but the situation now is not good and no one is buying,” said one vendor. “People’s money is stuck in the banks and no one has money to buy anything.”

Taliban officials have said the problems will ease once a new government is in place to restore order to the market and have appealed to other countries to maintain economic relations. But the structural problems run deep.

Even when its economy was floating on a tide of foreign money, growth was not keeping pace with the rise in Afghanistan’s population.

Apart from illegal narcotics, the country has no significant exports to generate revenue, and aid, which accounted for more than 40% of economic output, has abruptly disappeared.

A new central bank chief has been appointed but bankers outside Afghanistan said it would be difficult to get the financial system running again without the specialists who joined the exodus out of Kabul.

“I don’t know how they will manage it because all the technical staff, including senior management, has left the country,” one banker said.

In a sign of the pressure on Afghanistan’s currency reserves, the Taliban have announced a ban on taking dollars and valuable artefacts out of the country and said anyone intercepted would have their goods confiscated.

Some $9 billion in foreign reserves is held outside the country and out of reach of the Taliban’s embryonic government, which has still not been officially appointed, let alone recognized internationally.

To add to the problems, a recent suicide attack by an Afghan offshoot of Islamic State on crowds waiting to get a place on evacuation flights brought a chilling reminder that the bombings that were a regular feature of life in the past may not be over.

“The market situation had slightly improved in the last few days,” said one vendor at a Kabul street market where people sell household goods to raise cash. “But it completely collapsed after the suicide attack near the airport.”

(James Mackenzie reported from Milan; Additional reporting by Islamabad bureau and Tom Arnold in London; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

U.S. childcare in short supply as burned-out workers quit, new hires hard to find

By Jonnelle Marte

(Reuters) -Rochelle Wilcox, the owner of three childcare centers in New Orleans, receives 10 to 15 phone calls nearly every day for each school from parents asking if there is space for their children.

But Wilcox has to turn them away. While her enrollment is not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, she doesn’t have the staff to take on more students.

“I have to say that we’re full,” said Wilcox, who capped the wait list for the three schools at 140 children, compared to the more typical range of 45 to 60. She estimates the schools could accept nearly 40 more children if she could hire 10 more staffers.

Childcare centers across the country are struggling to find enough qualified educators to be fully staffed for back-to-school season, an obstacle that has some schools reducing planned enrollment and cutting back hours. Owners of childcare centers say more workers are quitting and fewer people than usual are applying for open positions.

The staffing crunch is further limiting childcare options for parents eager to get back to work. It also creates more hurdles for working mothers, who were disproportionately pushed out of the labor market when schools went virtual and childcare centers closed because of the pandemic.

Without reliable childcare, it will become more difficult for those parents to return to steady work schedules, economists say, potentially slowing a labor market recovery that many had hoped would get a jolt as schools reopened this fall and which becomes even more critical as enhanced jobless benefits expire in September.

Research released on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that women with children under age 6 made up 10% of the workforce before the pandemic but accounted for 22% of the jobs lost during the crisis. The ability to find quality childcare is “likely to be a determining factor for employment” for women with young children, Atlanta Fed researcher M. Melinda Pitts wrote in the report.

Four out of five early childhood educators working at childcare centers said they were understaffed in late June and early July, according to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. More than one in three respondents said they were thinking about leaving or shutting down their centers this year.

Recruiting childcare workers has always been difficult because wages are typically low – workers earn a median of $12 an hour according to the Labor Department – and the work is demanding. But those challenges were exacerbated by the pandemic, which put workers’ health at risk and, with many quitting, created greater responsibilities for those who remained on the job.

The renewed focus on the workforce is leading to a national conversation about early childhood educators and what needs to change to provide them with more opportunities and reduce turnover.

“I think what we’re going through right now is a revaluing of care work and understanding that care work is the work that makes all other work possible,” said Mara Bolis, associate director of women’s economic rights for Oxfam America.

BURNING OUT

Employment of child daycare workers plunged by 36% at the start of the pandemic after many centers shut down, greater than the roughly 15% drop in employment seen in the U.S. labor market overall, according to Labor Department data. Childcare employment was still down 11% from pre-pandemic levels as of July, compared to a 4% shortfall for the labor market overall.

Some workers leaving the industry now say they are worried about the health risks or are burning out after being asked to work longer hours with less support. Some people are moving into more lucrative roles as nannies, which came into higher demand during the pandemic with daycare centers shuttering and as more families opted to keep their children at home.

Amanda Chugg worked through the early part of the pandemic at a childcare center based in a hospital campus in Portland, Oregon. But she left in May of 2020 because too many of her colleagues were showing up to work sick and she was concerned about exposing her roommate, who is immunocompromised, to COVID-19.

“Having people coming to work sick is not uncommon in childcare,” said Chugg, 26, who now works as a nanny taking care of two children, ages four and six. “But with the onset of COVID it got to a place where it was untenable for me.”

Jordan Potts, 21, realized it was time for a change after being asked to work multiple 12-hour shifts because the center she worked at in north Texas was short-staffed. Many of the teachers hired to help would leave after a week or two.

“It kind of clicked, the burnout,” said Potts, who quit in August after about three years in the industry. Instead of caring for a room of about 10 one-year old’s, Potts is now working as a full-time nanny caring for a five-month old baby. While her pay is about the same, her responsibilities as a nanny are more manageable, said Potts, who will start college in January and wants to be an elementary school teacher.

SEEKING SOLUTIONS

Owners of childcare centers say they want to boost wages to retain more workers. But they argue they are limited in terms of how much more they can offer before they have to start raising tuition – putting more pressure on families already struggling to afford childcare.

That tension is not new, but some childcare center owners feel they are competing more intensely with retailers, restaurants and other businesses that are better able to increase pay or sweeten benefits to attract more workers during the pandemic.

Wilcox, the owner of the childcare centers in New Orleans, increased hourly wages for all of her staff this spring, going from a range of $10 to $13 per hour to a range of $12 to $16. But she still hasn’t been able to fill all of her openings.

In addition to better wages, early childhood educators say they need more opportunity for growth within the field, support from staff and broader access to health insurance, sick time and other benefits.

Megan Ahern initially envisioned she would spend her evenings coming up with creative lesson plans when she started teaching pre-Kindergarten full-time in Eugene, Oregon, in September of 2020.

But after struggling to afford groceries on her teacher paycheck alone, the 25-year-old started delivering food through Uber Eats after school. She worked close to 12 hours a day between the two jobs.

Ahern, who quit the school at the end of August, said she didn’t have the resources needed for her classroom, which included some children with special needs. Some of the children would hit, bite or pee on her. She was so overwhelmed she often found herself shedding tears during her 30-minute lunch breaks.

Ahern’s pay was increased to $17 an hour from $13 an hour in early August, but it wasn’t enough to change her mind. “Ideally I’ll be able to come back to working with kids at some point,” said Ahern, who plans to keep delivering food until she finds another job. “But I just need a break.”

(Reporting by Jonnelle Marte; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrea Ricci)