Sen. Patty Murray: That Jobs Report Didn’t Surprise Working Parents. It’s Past Time to Make Child Care Affordable for Every Family

News | May 17, 2021

The recent jobs report seems to have surprised a lot of people in Washington D.C. It didn’t surprise me—and I bet it didn’t surprise Patty Liu, a mom of two young kids from Washington state.

Like so many working women over the last year, Liu’s child care provider closed. She had to cut her hours to take care of her kids, and she got laid off from, in her words, her dream job.

Now, she’s wondering whether she should give up on the career she had worked so hard for and stay home with her kids, because child care was so expensive to begin with. 

Liu’s story, as she’ll tell you, isn’t unique and it isn’t new.