GDP growth was 5.7 percent, and for 11 straight months, new job creation has topped 400,000, he said. Inflation is running far too high, but it could encourage some people to return to the workforce, he said. Until the supply chain straightens out, this is going to be with us for a while, he said. He doesnвЂ™t see inflated fuel prices going away anytime soon. In many places, he said, people cannot afford to live where the jobs are. In other areas of concern: T he housing market was generally healthy, but not keeping up with demand, Harker said. ItвЂ™s a real problem that's only going to be solved with a public/private partnership, said Harker, who began his second five-year term as federal bank president in March 2021 and is a former University of Delaware president.

Workers are going elsewhere in a tight labor market, which means providers have to turn away families and limit hours, he said. ItвЂ™s not just the availability of childcare thatвЂ™s a problem, he said employers are also having trouble finding employees. Twenty-five percent of the state is what Harker described as a childcare desert, much of which is in the southern part. There are nearly 55,000 children in Delaware under the age of 5, he said. For children under the age of 5, Harker said, childcare providers across the state are licensed to serve roughly 35,000 children. One of the biggest problems is availability. At the height of the pandemic, he said, the participation rate dropped to just above 56 percent. The workforce participation rate for women sits slightly above 58 percent, but before the pandemic, the rate for women was a little over 59 percent.

Describing childcare as an unsustainable burden, Harker said 20 percent of the median household income is spent on one child attending childcare. The cost of childcare was already a problem, but the pandemic accelerated the issue, Harker said during an online discussion April 6 hosted by the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce. Two years later, he said, an additional 2.3 million women have left the workforce because they took on the brunt of the family responsibilities. According to Patrick Harker, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the cost of childcare before the COVID-19 pandemic was already forcing some women to leave the workforce to care for their families.

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