Research Corner: Child care costs out of reach for many Colorado families

In the previous CML Newsletter, we examined the availability of child care slots across Colorado, highlighting child care deserts and the gap in available child care slots across the state. This week, we look at another barrier to accessing quality child care for working parents: the cost of care.

Child care expenses today are more than triple what they were in 1990 — outpacing groceries, housing, and wages. Earning the state’s minimum wage of $14.81 per hour, 27 hours of a working parent’s 40-hour work week would go towards child care. At more than two-thirds of their weekly earnings, far exceeding the federal government’s affordability benchmark of 7%.

October’s Colorado Municipalities magazine will look closely at human resources and include information on how municipalities can help alleviate the child care burden faced by their employees.

Childcare in Colorado by-the-numbers

27 hours

The number of hours a parent earning Colorado’s minimum wage must work each week just to cover that week’s child care costs.

37%

The share of Colorado parents who report needing to withdraw from their savings or increase debt to afford for the cost of child care.

$21,840

The average annual cost of infant care in Colorado. This is more expensive than the average annual cost of in-state tuition at a four-year college: $9,967.

50%

Early childhood educators (95% of whom are women) make half as much as kindergarten teachers, and they are four times more likely to leave their jobs than other educators. This underscores just one of the challenges child care providers face in both expanding capacity and keeping care affordable.