More than 40% of families in the U.S. can’t access affordable childcare. How could they, when childcare for one infant costs more than the average rent in 17 states?
Parents feel it. Employers feel it. Childcare providers and teachers live it.
In 2024 alone, the number of people leaving work or reducing to part-time employment because of childcare costs shot up 43%—an exodus that costs $23B annually. This crisis is another thorn in the larger labor market shortage, with 71% of employers struggling to find talent. These are not separate problems; they’re symptoms of the same broken system.
Everyone—parents, business owners, childcare workers and legislators across the political aisle—agrees the system isn’t working. But often, the solutions proposed don’t come from the people who operate within or are most impacted by its brokenness.
Instead of throwing money at a system that pays workers poorly and burns them out within months, we need to listen to the on-the-ground experts about how to redesign it. When existing providers are funded to train more providers, you get better care, lower costs, and workers back in the labor force.
Fund Provider Expertise and Ingenuity
We’ve been told we must choose between helping childcare workers or helping businesses. But that is a false choice, one designed to maintain a crumbling status quo. Childcare is essential infrastructure for every other business. As people who work in childcare know, centers don’t close because demand is low or because workers demand too much pay, but because sustainability is impossible without real investment in the workforce and the business model.
But the people setting policy rarely talk to providers actually running childcare centers.
As a country, we often look to policymakers to solve problems they don’t live every day. Federal legislation repeatedly gets close to addressing the childcare crisis but falls short because the bills are built from the top down, without incorporating provider insight or local realities.
Childcare centers are small businesses. Providers already stretch limited resources, share knowledge informally, and innovate in response to community needs. What’s missing is investment.
So what happens when we fund provider expertise directly? We have successful proofs of concept from two regions to draw from.
Started in New Orleans and now scaled across Louisiana, childcare providers came together to train other childcare providers through Louisiana’s first federally registered apprenticeship program for early childhood educators. This created paid, solutions-based pathways to credentialing, expanded access to child development associate certifications, and opened childcare centers in non-traditional locations to support parents working shift positions.
Since the program’s launch in 2020, providers have delivered peer business coaching to 54 centers, secured more than $1.5M in grants and donations, and helped pass a historic early childhood education property tax assessment. These efforts will result in access to quality childcare for 2K children from low-income households, reduced turnover in early learning careers, and viable pathways for workers to become lead teachers.
In Chicago, a similar collaborative brings together multiple funders and 18 early childhood employers to increase compensation for educators, create better pathways for existing teachers to meet degree requirements, and generate a new pipeline of childcare talent. Though in a different geography with different demographics, the same fundamental insight applies: when providers feel empowered and motivated, burnout decreases and performance improves.
These models don’t rely on outside “experts” telling providers what they need. They trust providers to apply their lived experience to strengthen their own sector, and the return on investment is substantial.
High-quality early childhood education generates $7.30 for every dollar invested and improves language and math outcomes through 3rd grade. Businesses also benefit from having access to the 60% of parents who are working less than full-time but could return to full-time work with access to quality childcare.
Ultimately, better conditions for providers means better outcomes for communities, too, raising property values by $13 for every dollar invested.
The Bottom Line Charts the Path Forward
We don’t need to choose between being pro-worker or pro-business. Childcare workers are the infrastructure that makes every other business possible; there is no economy without childcare. The models in New Orleans and Chicago prove that any region serious about workforce development could replicate this approach.
To fix the bottleneck choking economic growth across every sector, we must give providers the resources—and the respect—to do what they already know how to do. The people doing the work don’t need to be fixed. They need to be funded.
Rochelle Wilcox is the co-founder and CEO of For Providers By Providers, a childcare provider-led organization that advocates for providers’ concerns. Under Rochelle’s leadership, the organization has built a collective, independent policy voice for childcare centers serving Louisiana’s low-income children of color.