Child care staffing crisis leaves 33,000 kids on waitlists in Wisconsin

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Department of Children and Families sounded the alarm on severe staffing shortages in Wisconsin’s child care industry, with a new report showing 60% of providers lack the workers to serve at full capacity.

In DCF’s Child Care Supply and Demand Survey, child care providers across the state revealed they could serve up to 33,000 more kids if they had more staff, and instead are having to close unutilized classrooms.

“Working parents across our state depend on having high-quality, affordable child care so they can get to work and feed their families, but with providers closing their doors and reducing slots due to staffing, affordable child care is becoming harder and harder to find,” Evers announced Monday. “This is not sustainable. If we want to address our state’s generational workforce challenges, we must make sure child care centers have the resources they need to keep their doors open, pay their staff fairly, and serve as many kids as possible.”

The average pay for child care teachers is $13.55 per hour in Wisconsin, less than half the average Wisconsin worker’s hourly wage.

But staffing shortages and low pay are not the only issues Wisconsin’s overburdened child care system faces.

The DCF’s July report revealed a steep decline in child care affordability between 2022 and 2023, with childcare costs consuming as much as 36% of household income for young, median-income families in the state. With pandemic-era federal subsidies drying up, the problem is expected to get worse, especially as child care providers say they would have to raise already high child care prices if they want to pay workers more.

Evers has called for more taxpayer-funded subsidies to increase the pay of child care providers and workers, which he hopes would draw more workers to the child care industry while keeping the costs for families the same.

If current providers gained enough staff to operate at full capacity and take in 33,000 more children, there would still be about 15,000 Wisconsin children on child care waitlists.