The care economy— so critical to all of our well-being and the health and safety of our children and elders — has been tough for numbers-minded leaders including CEOs, investors, and business school professors to discuss without more hard data. Now, Boston Consulting Group is helping us out with a report quantifying the lost GDP growth if we don’t better organize this vast ecosystem. In 2030 and beyond, the cumulative burden of too few workers to fill care jobs and so many productive employees quitting paid work to take up the slack, will be sapping at least $290 billion a year from the US economy, BCG calculates. I was happy to advise BCG’s researchers on this work.
Fixing the US care problem isn’t just good business, it’s necessary business.