(The Center Square) – The number of Arizona’s licensed child care providers fell by 46% from 2002 to 2024, according to a recent report.
Common Sense Institute Arizona released a report highlighting the state’s shortage of child care providers. In 2002, Arizona had 5,126 providers, but 22 years later, that number had diminished to 2,779.
Katie Ratlief, CSI’s executive director, told The Center Square that the decline in the state’s licensed child care providers has been ongoing “for a long time,” but accelerated after 2018.
From 2018 to 2022, the report found the number of people becoming licensed child care providers in Arizona decreased by over 9% annually.
In 2002, there were 1.11 child care workers per 1,000 people in Arizona, but in 2024 that number fell to 0.82, the report noted.
Ratlief noted it has gotten “much more expensive to start and to continue to operate a child care facility.”
There have been increases in the state’s licensing fees, requirements for ongoing training and the number of hours of experience required to get a child care license, she told The Center Square. She noted all of that has contributed to a decline in the number of child care providers.
Ratlief said it is hard to know what has led to the increase in fees and regulations over the years.
According to the report, between 2018 and 2024, families have seen the cost of child care skyrocket over 60% for “some provider models and age groups.” Specifically, the cost of infant child care has increased 42% over this time span, the report noted.
A minimum-wage worker in Arizona would need to work 90 hours a month to afford child care costs, the report stated.
Ratlief said this is not a “sustainable model for the economy.”
Of the estimated 460,882 children under 6 years old in Arizona, only 256,267 licensed child care slots are available to them, the report stated.
In Arizona’s rural areas, circumstances for child care providers are “dramatically more pronounced,” the executive director said. The report examined Santa Cruz County, which has a population of 48,000.
In Santa Cruz County, infant daily costs have increased 52% between 2018 and 2024, the report stated.
The county has only one child care slot for every four children under 6 years old, the report found.
Another rural county, Apache, has one child care slot for every seven children under 6 years old, according to the report.
A solution to help address the child care provider disparity in rural areas is home-based child care, Ratlief said.
Home-based child care offers more flexibility and is more likely to provide year-round services than center-based child care, she said.
Ratlief noted home-based child care providers “represent a very small minority” of Arizona’s child care providers. The report found that center-based child care accounts for more than 80% of the state’s child care facilities and more than 98% of available child care slots.
Home-based child care providers are subject to the same regulations as center-based child care providers. But home-based child care is much cheaper to start because owners don’t have to purchase a building, the Common Sense Institute Arizona executive director said.
The report said the daily cost of home-based child care was upward of 43% lower than that of center-based child care.
According to Ratlief, the lack of child care providers is having a huge effect on Arizona’s economy.
The report said if the child care provider gap were closed, it would allow 51,000 people to return to the workforce and increase Arizona’s economy by up to 5%.
Closing the child care provider gap in five years could help Arizona create up to 233,600 jobs, $31 billion in state gross domestic product and nearly $700 million in new state tax revenue, the report showed.
“The fact that so many people in [Arizona’s] economy are not participating in the workforce because they cannot find affordable child care is a huge economic issue,” Ratlief said.
To help address this, Ratlief said the report encourages policymakers to look at ways to make becoming a child care provider less difficult and expensive without “simply subsidizing the costs.”
Arizona needs to be more innovative in how it starts these facilities because the state doesn’t have enough of them, Ratlief said, adding that the health and safety of children and families should be protected during this process.
