May 13, 2025
Home-based child care is in high demand but isn’t economically viable. Providers work long hours for wages that are often less than minimum wage.
Despite the pivotal role that child care, including home-based child care, plays in the U.S. economy, it continues to be primarily a consumer-funded expenditure that is privately provided and privately paid. Home-based child care, in particular, although in high demand by parents, has such small profit margins that very few providers are willing to enter the market, and too many leave because they cannot sustain their business.