Child care employment numbers see a small uptick, adding about 3,200 jobs last month.
While the child care sector continues to face an employment shortage that predates the pandemic, job numbers have now reached their highest point on record – even before the pandemic. Whether this upward trend will persist remains to be seen.
Figure 1
190,400
Child care jobs added during the ARPA funding distribution period
21.7%
Percentage increase in child care jobs since April 2021,
when ARPA distribution began
Child care job numbers from selected states and metro areas generally reflect the national trend of slight increases compared to the previous month's report. Meanwhile, California and Texas experienced drops of 1.22% and 1.32% respectively.
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.
