Poor job quality undermines employment experiences and outcomes for all direct care workers, but how do these experiences and outcomes vary within the workforce? This research brief offers a detailed snapshot of the direct care workforce by gender and race/ethnicity, and underscores the need for policy and practice interventions that explicitly address disparities in this workforce.
Key Takeaways
Most direct care workers are women and people of color, and women of color in particular are a large and growing segment of the direct care workforce.
Many people of color in the direct care workforce are immigrants—especially compared to their white counterparts.
In the direct care workforce, Black/African American direct care workers have the lowest family income and Hispanic/Latino workers have the lowest annual earnings of any racial or ethnic group.
