Lenese Rogers reads a story to children at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., in November 2023. The military needs to better track the effectiveness of efforts to retain workers at base child care facilities, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released May 14, 2024. (Justin Todd/U.S. Space Force)
The military doesn’t track the effectiveness of recruiting and retention at its day care centers despite employee turnover as high as 50%, a federal watchdog agency study found.
The Government Accountability Office said the Defense Department services need to better assess whether year-round recruitment and financial incentives for new hires and existing staff are working.
The services at the end of 2022 reported about 6,200 child care vacancies, shortages that the Pentagon says can mean longer wait times for families struggling to get care for their children.
“By developing metrics to track the results of their retention efforts, the military services can identify which are most effective at retaining child care workers,” said the report, which was released Tuesday.
The Senate Armed Services Committee directed the review as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
All four military services calculate child care worker turnover the same way, the GAO report said, with turnover rates ranging from 34% in the Marine Corps to 50% at Army child care centers in 2022, citing the most recent data available.
The highest demand for care continues to be for infants and toddlers, the GAO report said. In 2022, the DOD served nearly 163,000 children, which includes after-school care for children up to age 12. At the time, it employed about 17,500 workers, according to the report.
GAO for its review conducted in-person and virtual site visits at eight installations in Hawaii, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. They were chosen because of their large waitlists and unmet child care need, according to the report.
Military officials told investigators that onboarding can take up to six months and that the work environment is stressful. Limited career progression and competition from other employers also harm retention, they added.
The Navy said it’s speeding up health screenings to onboard staff, while the Marines are considering delayed screening.
The services also offer incentives beyond the starting pay of $18.21 per hour, which was approved for entry-level DOD child care workers in the United States as of January.
The Army conducted a pilot program that offered all stateside child care workers access to base commissaries. It plans to expand commissary access to child and youth program employees on all Army installations in fiscal year 2025.
But the services won’t know which incentives are effective without tracking results, the study said.
The services generally agreed with the GAO’s findings.
Air Force officials told the GAO that their branch is working on a data collection system for its initiatives, but the timeline is indefinite.
The Marine Corps, meanwhile, said it doesn’t have the resources for a tracking system. The Navy is looking at adopting metrics on how long it takes to onboard child care workers, according to the report.
The Army said it has conducted several surveys to gauge why employees leave but hasn’t collected data on the effectiveness of its incentives.
DOD said in its response to the report that it will direct the services to develop the metrics called for by the GAO.
