Parenting is a hard job, and for many Americans, there aren’t many options to get professional childcare help.
“Nearly half of all young children in the US live in a childcare desert, meaning they live in an area of the country where there is not sufficient licensed childcare,” Casey Peeks, the senior director of Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress and one of the authors of a recent report on the geography of childcare, told Business Insider.
Childcare deserts are highly prevalent in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, and Kansas. A fact sheet about the results cautions that “Differences in state child care licensing and registration requirements directly affect measures of child care access and desert designations,” suggesting that comparisons across states are less reliable than within them.
The report said 70% of young children living in remote rural areas are in childcare deserts, an increase from the policy institute’s previous report published in 2018.
Peeks said that attracting workers to childcare jobs is a major issue. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed there were an estimated 520,180 childcare workers in the US as of May 2024. The median annual wage for this job was $32,050, below the overall national median of $49,500.
Meanwhile, families are struggling to afford care. Child Care Aware of America said the average price for care was $13,128 in 2024. “It would take 10% of a married couple with children’s median income to afford this national average price,” the organization said.
Peeks said there needs to be solutions for both the supply and demand sides of the childcare crisis, which would mean making care more affordable, investing in facilities, and boosting childcare workers’ compensation.
She said that even in centers that have space to serve more children, they may not be able to because “they can’t find enough workers to meet the demand of families that want to be enrolled in those programs.”
Peeks pointed to some progress in access to care, including New Mexico becoming the first state to have no-cost universal childcare this past November. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in March the first few communities that will get 2,000 free 2-K seats for the fall.
“I think it’s all because people realize that this is so critical for our economy,” Peeks said. “It helps parents go to work, it prepares children to enter school ready, and then have more success down the line.”
The new analysis focuses on licensed care, but parents may also rely on informal care options, such as a neighbor taking on care duties. “Oftentimes, families kind of have to mix and match,” Peeks said. “Maybe they have a childcare program, but it isn’t the full hours that a parent needs. So they have to have grandma or a friend pick the child up and watch them until they’re home from work.”
