New Hampshire’s child care system is in crisis. Families pay high tuition, early childhood educators earn low wages, and providers struggle to break even. Recent data show these problems are not improving and, in some areas, they’re getting worse.

Child Care Tuition Remains Unaffordable 
Between 2022 and 2024, tuition for an infant and 4-year-old in center-based care in NH averaged nearly $30,000 annually, based on estimates from Child Care Aware of America. Among families with children under 18 years old between 2019 and 2023, using U.S. Census Bureau data, this equated to approximately 19.6% of median income for a married couple ($152,054), 40.6% of a single father’s median income ($73,233), and 60% of a single mother’s median income ($49,587).

Many ECE Professionals Do Not Earn Living Wages
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2024 ECE professionals in NH categorized as “child care workers” earned a median annual salary of $34,570, over $2,000 more per year than in 2023. Preschool teachers earned a median annual salary of $37,500, an estimated annual decrease of $150 between 2023 and 2024.

Completing college credits may not increase ECE professionals’ wages. According to research from the University of NH’s Carsey School of Public Policy, the ECE workforce has a higher percentage of professionals with at least some college education compared to the overall NH workforce. However, ECE teachers with at least some college education do not earn significantly more than the overall Granite State ECE workforce.

Wages for ECE professionals may be too low to meet basic living expenses in NH. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, a single Granite State adult without children would need to earn $51,552 annually before taxes to support themselves. A single adult with one child would need to earn $93,451, while two working adults with one child would need to earn $104,373. These estimates do not include money set aside for emergency savings, retirement, or paying off student loan debt.

In 2022, based on estimates from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, about 9.4% of NH’s ECE professionals were living at or below the poverty line, compared to only 0.2% of elementary and middle school teaching professionals. In 2021, 43% of ECE workforce families nationally participated in one or more public safety net programs.

NH’s ECE Workforce Shrank 
Low wages and lack of benefits may contribute to high turnover rates within the ECE profession and make recruiting new teachers difficult for providers. These challenges may have contributed to the approximately 8% reduction in the number of individuals employed in the NH ECE workforce between 2023 and 2024, despite the Granite State workforce experiencing a net increase of about 1% across those years.

The decrease coincided with the end of several one-time COVID-19 pandemic federal aid programs that expired in 2023. This decrease in ECE employees is based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys of employers and doesn’t include self-employed child care providers who often run family-based child care businesses from their homes. A recent analysis from the University of NH’s Carsey School of Public Policy found family-based child care providers in the Granite State experienced a higher closure rate between 2023 and 2024 (12.3%) than ECE center-based care providers (2.8%), suggesting the ECE workforce reduction may be larger than U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates indicate.

Federal discretionary funds intended to support long-term stability and capacity building in the child care infrastructure, as well as $15 million in NH General Funds allocated to ECE providers for recruitment and retention efforts, were distributed during 2024. The potential effects from these additional funding sources are not captured in the current workforce data estimates. 

Nicole Heller, PhD, is a senior policy analyst with the NH Fiscal Policy Institute. For more information, see NHFPI’s February Issue Brief, “The Economic Impact of the Granite State’s Child Care Shortage,” at nhfpi.org.

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