Child care employment numbers see no change from the previous month.
While the economy overall added more than 300,000 jobs in March, child care neither lost nor gained jobs in March after adjusting for this month’s annual BLS update to the national data.
Figure 1
184,300
Child care jobs added during the ARPA funding distribution period
21.0%
Percentage increase in child care jobs since April 2021,
when ARPA distribution began
Looking across the selected states and metro areas we track, we continue to find a mix of employment situations in the child care sector. Whereas Connecticut and New Jersey saw no change from the previous month, California, New York City, and Texas had meaningful increases while Pennsylvania job numbers continued to dip.
Figure 2
Table 1
Details on the data source
- Data Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey.
- Current month’s jobs numbers are a preliminary estimate by BLS. Our figures include BLS adjustments to previous months and thus may differ from earlier Jobs Tracker Figures. These estimates include employees in the “child day care services” industry, which includes child care, Head Start, preschool and school-age care programs. The estimates include employees only and do not include self-employed workers, such as owners of home-based child care figures published by CSCCE.
- This employment data cannot be disaggregated by education, race/ethnicity, role, setting, or funding stream.
- For the “child day care services” industry, estimates for a small number of states and cities are available, a selection of which are included here. The availability of state- or city-level estimates varies by industry, and the most recent month’s jobs numbers are a preliminary estimate by BLS. These data are released by BLS later in the month than national.
