Child care job numbers across the US increased by a modest 3,800 in April,
The child care sector continues to face a long-standing jobs crisis, which will likely worsen given new threats, including the abrupt closures of five Head Start regional offices and a growing discourse around deregulation.
The administration’s policies targeting immigrant populations also have the potential to destabilize the already-fragile early care and education system. Nationally, about one out of every five child care workers is an immigrant, which makes child care one of the most immigrant-dense sectors in the low-wage labor market.
Figure 1
In the states and metro areas CSCCE tracks, child care employment continues to fluctuate. Texas and New Jersey experienced the largest increases over the previous month, each around 1.6 percent. Connecticut, the Los Angeles metro area, and New York City saw no change.
With federal funding under attack, it remains critical for state and local governments to invest in the workforce. Explore our newly updated ECE Workforce Compensation Policy Dashboard to see current state and local efforts to boost wages and benefits for early educators.
Check back next month as CSCCE continues to track the numbers.
Figure 2
Table 1
Details on the data source
- Data Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025). 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.
- 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.
