The 63 million

63 million Americans currently provide care to a loved one. 105 million if you include all unpaid support. That is not a niche, an interest group, or a vertical. It is roughly one in three adults. Yet the systems built around them — Medicaid work-verification requirements, immigration enforcement of the home-care workforce, $22,000 median wages for the people who do this for a living — keep treating caregiving as someone else's problem to solve later.

Ai-jen Poo's argument isn't new, but the assembly of pressures she names is. Washington State now runs the first social insurance program for long-term care. New Mexico just made child care free for residents. The state-by-state map is moving faster than the federal one.

The piece is worth reading for the scale of the number more than for the policy. Most caregivers feel alone with this. They are not. 63 million is the company they didn't know they had.