Excerpts
With less than 3,000 child care jobs added in August, and previous July estimates revised downward, there has been effectively no change in the overall number of childcare jobs since last month. Child care employment is still 8.4% below what it was in February 2020.
The ongoing child care jobs shortage remains concerning for the outlook of the sector.
In contrast to the national data, child care job numbers from selected states and metro areas show sharp drops from the previous month. Most of these states and metro areas were still about 10% below pre-pandemic numbers as of June, and by July, on average across these areas, child care employment dropped a further 5% below what it was in February 2020.
These are concerning setbacks for a sector that was beginning to see some recovery. For example, New Jersey was nearly at pre-pandemic job levels but as a result of recent job losses is now more in line with other states, at about 9% below what it was in February 2020.
Details on the data source
- Data Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021). 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.