OKLAHOMA CITY (OBV) — The Oklahoma State Senate’s Business & Insurance Committee has ambitious plans for the upcoming legislative session, including reducing the higher end of the unemployment tax and helping make child care more available.
Sen. Bill Coleman, the head of the Business & Insurance Committee, spoke with Oklahoma Business Voice about the committee’s plans for the 60th Oklahoma Legislature during the legislature’s Organizational Day this week.
Coleman, R-Ponca City, said the Business & Insurance Committee plans to reduce the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission (OESC) tax, also referred to as the unemployment tax.
“The level in which a small, tiny business pays unemployment compensation has been out of whack for many, many years. It has been devastating to some small businesses,” Coleman said. “We’re going to lower the high end of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission tax. We’re going to lower it down from 9.2 percent, when you’re on the high end, to about 6 percent.”
Coleman said he knows of businesses with four or five employees that struggled to pay the tax when an employee quit and qualified for unemployment.
Making child care more accessible to Oklahoma’s workers is another top priority, Coleman said.
Inaccessible and unaffordable child care has been an ongoing problem across the United States and in Oklahoma, with 55 percent of the state considered a child care desert.
Coleman wants to provide a tax credit to employers who make child care available to employees.
“We know that the [child care] shortage that we have can be attributed a lot to the expensive child care,” Coleman said. “It makes a lot of sense for people to stay home right now because child care is so expensive. So, if we can help employers supply child care to their employees, they will have more employees.”
Rep. Suzanne Schreiber, D-Tulsa, and Rep. Mark Lawson, R-Sapulpa, filed a bill in the Oklahoma State Legislature last year that offered a 30 percent tax credit to employers who share in their employees’ childcare costs. The credit was capped at $30,000 per year, per employer. The bill passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives and the Oklahoma Senate but did not clear Conference Committee. Similar legislation will likely be filed in the upcoming legislative session.
Oklahoma has been experiencing a child care crisis for several years now. Child care facilities are either too few in many areas of the state, too expensive or often both.
A recently released Oklahoma State University report, Understanding Access and Barriers to Childcare in Oklahoma, cited Center for American Progress data, which shows that 55 percent of Oklahoma’s population live in childcare deserts and that such deserts are in both rural and urban areas.
OSU’s report referenced DHS Childcare data that showed Oklahoma having 3,102 licensed child care facilities across the state’s 77 counties in October 2023.
“This number ranged from zero licensed facilities in Cimarron County to 839 facilities in Oklahoma County,” the report states.
Oklahoma Health and Human Services classified 35 counties – nearly half of the counties in Oklahoma – as a childcare desert.
“The implication is that over 66% of children in these communities may be without childcare options,” the OSU report states.
If a parent has a child care facility in their area, they might have trouble finding a spot for their child. The report found that Oklahoma, on average, has 3.5 children for each licensed childcare slot.
“The median is 2.45, which means that half of all counties in Oklahoma have more than two children per available licensed childcare slot,” the report states.
However, a parent might not be able to afford child care even if they are able to find a facility with an available spot.
Child care had an average annual cost of $11,582 per child in 2023. The report described the annual cost as taking 10 percent of a married couple’s median household income and 32 percent of a single parent’s median household income.
Programs such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act and initiatives like the Child Tax Credit expansion were enacted to help make child care more affordable for working families, but many families throughout the nation and across Oklahoma still struggle.
“Despite these efforts, challenges persist, and access to affordable, high-quality childcare remains a significant concern for many American families, including Oklahomans,” the report states.
Oklahoma businesses have been adversely impacted by the childcare facility and worker shortage, seeing a 6.1 percent decline in workforce labor participation among Oklahoma mothers who have children ranging in age from infant to four years old.
“Often times, the parent has to either leave the workforce or make a new work arrangement. It’s even harder if a family has nontraditional hours of care that they need; it’s very difficult to find childcare that operates outside traditional hours of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” Carrie Williams, executive director of Oklahoma Child Care Resource and Referral, previously said to Oklahoma Business Voice.
Parents nationwide are exiting the workforce due to diminishing child care options.
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation study states that 58 percent of working parents reported leaving their job because they could not find viable child care. Also, 32 percent of women surveyed said having to be home to care for family members made returning to work difficult.
