Putting Today’s
Child Care in Context

Taking the advice offered during the convening of national policy influencers, we are not devoting significant time and attention in this report to “loving the problem.” We share the following key statistics here to underscore its urgency and help explain the types of solutions this report is recommending.

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HIGH NEED AND INADEQUATE SUPPLY

Before, during, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, the child care sector suffered significantly. Many programs closed and others struggled to stay open to serve the needs of essential workers. The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act that helped 225,000 providers nationwide expired in 2023. Recent studies have documented the trouble parents continue to have finding child care.

50%

A 2018 study found that 50% of U.S. families live in communities defined as child care deserts—areas that don’t have enough child care capacity to meet the needs of families.

370K

During the pandemic, more than one-third of child care jobs—370,000 jobs in total—were lost from February 2020 to April 2020.

3.2M

70,000 child care programs could close and 3.2 million children could lose their spots in a child care program as a result of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act expiring in September 2023.

23.1%

Between fall 2023 and spring 2024, the share children under 12 years old in their household who lacked child care increased from 17.8% to 23.1% in states without significant child care sector funding.

Uneven Quality and Limited Options

Standards and regulations that define child care quality vary across and within states. These regulations also vary by setting or building type (ECE -homes, -centers, or -schools). This variation, coupled with insufficient public funding to incentivize quality, puts quality child care out of reach for most families. Calls to deregulate child care are increasing as early childhood experts continue to point out the harm and costs associated with deregulation. Child care policies also have limited families by not supporting and honoring trusted caregivers as a publicly funded, quality, and valid child care option.

HIGH COSTS

Nationwide, the average annual cost of care rose to $11,582 per child in 2022, according to Child Care Aware of America’s 2023 annual report. It costs upward of $18,000 per year for center-based care in high-cost-of-living areas such as Massachusetts, California, New York, New Jersey, and Washington state. D.C. continues to have the most expensive child care in the country, at $25,480 per year for an infant in center-based child care and $23,431 per year for a toddler in center-based child care. In 2022, the average price of care for two children exceeded average housing costs in three of the four regions—Midwest, Northeast, and South. Also, the average price of child care for two children exceeds annual in-state university tuition in all four regions.

LOW PAY AND CHALLENGING WORKING CONDITIONS

The ECE workforce is overwhelmingly women (97%) and disproportionately women of color (38%). Too many early childhood educators working in child care make rock-bottom wages and have subpar benefits and working conditions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023, child care workers earned an average annual income of $32,070, or $15.42 per hour.

INCREASED BUT INSUFFICIENT GOVERNMENT INVESTMENTS

According to the Center for American Progress, the past decade has seen a significant increase in attention on the United States’ ongoing child care crisis. In a 2024 timeline of federal legislation over the past decade, it notes: “Families with young children have long been subject to the insufficiency of the nation’s fragile child care system, and they continue to face barriers to finding, accessing, and affording high-quality care options. … Yet only in recent years has child care received broad national attention as a key policy priority.”

The need for increased child care access and quality have never been more important, and the child care industry has never been more fragile.
—The Hechinger Report

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