Workplace Support and Depression Drive Preschool Teachers’ Plans to Quit

A quiet crisis is unfolding in America’s early childhood classrooms, and new national evidence suggests the forces pushing teachers toward the exit door are not the ones many policymakers have focused on most. In one of the first nationally representative studies of its kind, researchers at The Ohio State University analyzed survey data from 3,379 center-based early care and education teachers and found that feeling supported at work and struggling with depressive symptoms were the two factors most strongly linked to a teacher’s intention to leave their job. Surprisingly, hourly wage, long assumed to be a primary driver of turnover in this notoriously underpaid field, showed no significant association with the desire to move on.

The stakes of this research are considerable. Roughly one in four early care and education teachers leaves their position every year, a turnover rate dramatically higher than the roughly 10 percent annual rate observed among kindergarten teachers. Each departure disrupts the stable relationships young children need for healthy development, degrades classroom quality, increases child-to-adult ratios, and piles additional stress onto the teachers who remain. Worse still, studies show that most early childhood teachers who quit their center do not simply move to another one; they leave the field entirely, compounding a staffing shortage that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has flagged as a threat to families’ access to affordable childcare.

The new study, published in the Early Childhood Education Journal by Erin G. Fox, Sarah N. Lang, and Kelly M. Purtell, draws on the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education Workforce Questionnaire, a federally funded survey designed to capture a nationally representative portrait of the workforce serving children from birth through age five who have not yet entered kindergarten. Because the survey disproportionately sampled low-income areas, the researchers applied statistical sampling weights to ensure their findings generalize to the broader national population of center-based teachers. The analysis was preregistered on the Open Science Framework, a practice that commits researchers to their analysis plan in advance and reduces the risk of cherry-picking results.

To measure the risk of departure, the team constructed a binary indicator of turnover intention from two survey questions: whether respondents had done anything in the past three months to look for a new or additional job, and their main reason for doing so. Teachers searching only for a second job or summer employment, which do not signal intent to quit their current classroom role, were classified as not intending to leave. The three focal predictors were equally carefully measured. Compensation came from the survey’s calculated continuous hourly wage variable. Workplace support was a composite of three items asking teachers whether they and their co-workers were treated with respect day to day, whether teamwork was encouraged, and whether they had help dealing with difficult children or parents, a scale that showed strong internal consistency. Mental health was assessed with the brief seven-item version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale.

The statistical strategy relied on weighted binary logistic regression, a technique suited to predicting a yes-or-no outcome while accounting for the survey’s complex sampling design. In the primary model, teachers who reported greater workplace support had roughly half the odds of intending to leave compared with those who felt less supported, an odds ratio of about 0.51. Each increment of depressive symptoms increased the odds of turnover intention. Hourly wage, by contrast, was not significantly associated with turnover intention at all, a result that held even after controlling for an extensive set of covariates including race and ethnicity, education level, years in the field, possession of a Child Development Associate credential, household income, receipt of government assistance, marital status, and number of children at home. The full model accounted for approximately 14 percent of the variability in turnover intention.

Guided by Cumming and Wong’s holistic framework of early childhood educator well-being, which treats individual, relational, and workplace factors as interconnected, the researchers also tested whether depression changes the game. Prior regional studies had hinted that teachers with poorer mental health may be more sensitive to low pay or weak workplace support, making those conditions more likely to push them toward the door. Yet in this nationally representative sample, neither interaction term reached statistical significance. Depression did not meaningfully amplify the relationship between workplace support and turnover intention, nor between wage and turnover intention, though the interaction with workplace support came relatively close with a p-value of .09.

The null finding on wages is arguably the most provocative result, and the authors offer several plausible explanations. Average hourly pay in the sample was just $14.38, and compensation across centers varies relatively little, meaning a teacher committed to the field is unlikely to find meaningfully better pay simply by switching employers. That structural ceiling may mute wage differences as a motivator for job searching. There is also the question of calling: many early childhood teachers describe their work as a vocation, accepting low wages because they find the work meaningful, a commitment that may paradoxically contribute to their financial fragility. Importantly, the authors caution that the wage null finding does not mean money does not matter. Previous experimental evidence from Virginia showed that financial incentive payments reduced turnover, and low compensation has been linked to worse mental health and diminished capacity to provide high-quality care. Other dimensions of financial well-being, such as benefits and one-time bonuses, may still shape decisions to stay or go.

The findings on workplace support and mental health point toward actionable strategies for center leaders. Cultures of respect, teamwork, and practical help handling challenging interactions appear to function as a genuine retention lever, not merely a nicety. Leadership practices such as open communication, formal recognition of teachers’ accomplishments, investment in professional development, peer mentorship programs, and collaborative team-building can all foster the relational climate that the data suggest keeps teachers in their classrooms. On the mental health front, interventions ranging from social-emotional learning programs designed for teachers to mindfulness training have shown promise in bolstering educators’ resilience and well-being, and the new evidence suggests such supports may pay dividends in workforce stability.

The study also carries instructive caveats. Its cross-sectional design precludes causal conclusions, and the workplace support scale showed a ceiling effect, with responses clustered at the positive end, which may have limited the ability to detect moderation effects. Both workplace support and depression were self-reported, raising the possibility that the cognitive biases associated with depression color how teachers perceive their work environments, making the two constructs difficult to fully disentangle. The data, collected in 2019, predate the COVID-19 pandemic, which evidence suggests intensified both turnover and mental health strains in the early childhood workforce. And with the model explaining only about 14 percent of the variance, much of the story of why teachers stay or leave remains untold.

Even with those limitations, the national scope of the analysis marks a meaningful advance over the small, regional studies that have long dominated this literature, confirming that workplace support and mental well-being are robust correlates of turnover intention across the country rather than artifacts of particular states or programs. The authors conclude that targeting supportive workplace climates and teachers’ mental health through prevention and intervention may be among the most effective ways to reduce early childhood teachers’ intention to leave their jobs. For a field in which one departure can fracture a young child’s first relationships outside the family, that message carries urgency well beyond the staff lounge.

Subject of Research: Predictors of turnover intention among center-based early care and education teachers in the United States

Article Title: Examining Influence on Early Care and Education Teachers’ Intention to Leave: Compensation, Workplace Support, and Depressive Symptoms

Article References: Fox, E. G., Lang, S. N., & Purtell, K. M. (2026). Examining Influence on Early Care and Education Teachers’ Intention to Leave: Compensation, Workplace Support, and Depressive Symptoms. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-026-02329-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10643-026-02329-y

Keywords: early care and education, teacher turnover, turnover intention, workplace support, depressive symptoms, compensation, teacher retention, early childhood workforce, mental health, childcare, Examining, Influence