Three years after the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, child care employment numbers continue to climb.

While the child care sector continues to face an employment shortage that began well before the pandemic, job numbers have reached their highest point on record since the pandemic started. Some states are making new or increased workforce payments that extend beyond ARPA. 

Figure 1

188,000
Child care jobs added during the ARPA funding distribution period

21.4%
Percentage increase in child care jobs since April 2021, when ARPA distribution began

Looking across the selected states and metro areas we track, we find uneven job growth in the child care sector. After adjusting for this month’s annual BLS update to the data, New Jersey and Massachusetts have shown job growth since August 2023. Meanwhile, California, Texas, Connecticut, Pennsylvania experienced a dip in the last month, and Pennsylvania remains below pre-pandemic levels.

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.