Background

Care as a labour market

Well-known socio-demographic long-term trends, such as the increasing women’s participation in the labour market and an aging population, have brought an increasing demand for care services in most European countries. Hence, the sector displayed a high potential in terms of job creation and its capacity to sustain employment by relieving (especially female) workers from caring responsibilities and thereby mobilizing the “productive potential” of citizens.

The expansion of employment in care services, through the promotion of specific education and training programs and dedicated labour market policies, would satisfy not only the growing demand for these services, but would respond also to the priorities enucleated in the European Pillar of Social Rights, thus actively contributing to the implementation of its Action Plan released in 2021 (e.g. principle no. 11 on childcare and children right to access affordable early childhood education and care of good quality, and principle no. 18 promoting the right to affordable long-term care services of good quality, in particular, home-care).

Nevertheless, a growing body of studies has demonstrated that, despite the notable employment potentialities offered by the care sector, these services across EU countries lack an appropriate staffing level and an adequate skills endowment, especially due to the poor wages and working conditions offered by both public and private care providers.

These dynamics are connected to what the scholars define as the care penalty (Barron & West 2013; Folbre, Gautham & Smith 2023): the combination of disadvantages in terms of salary and contractual levels, working conditions, job quality, and content led to a situation in the labour market where wages for care workers turned to be systematically lower and more compressed than the rest of the service economy. At the same time, professionals involved in ECEC and LTC services (nurses, teachers, and educators) systematically suffer from worse economic and contractual recognition compared to the same qualifications in a similar realm, such as in the healthcare sector for nurses and the primary education services for teachers.