Child care advocates point to teacher wage supplements as low-cost, urgent fix

There is not enough child care to meet families’ needs. The main reason, experts say, is that child care teachers cannot afford to stay in the profession.

“The workforce issues in child care centers themselves really drive a lot of these accessibility problems,” said Neil Harrington, NC Child’s director of policy and research, at a recent child care event in Rocky Mount.

Advocates are pointing to wage supplements as a strategy to keep teachers from leaving — and keep classrooms open for families.

The average wage for child care teachers in the state was $14.20 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2023, child care teachers and assistant teachers had a turnover rate of 38%, up from 21% in 2019, according to a 2024 report from nonprofit Early Years, previously known as Child Care Services Association.

Though more recent workforce data is not available, child care owners have shared that they have especially struggled to retain teachers since pandemic-era funding ended in March of 2025.

Wage supplements, advocates say, could decrease that turnover and stabilize the field.

“It’s not going to fix the problem, but it would stop the bleeding,” said Henrietta Zalkind, executive director of the Down East Partnership for Children (DEPC), the local Smart Start affiliate that hosted the Rocky Mount event in October to spread awareness of the local and statewide child care challenges facing families, providers, and businesses. DEPC serves Nash and Edgecombe counties.

The Child Care WAGE$ Program, available in 68 counties through local funding, provides education-based wage supplements to teachers after six months of staying at the same child care program. Making the program available in all 100 counties would cost about $53 million every two years, said Kristi Snuggs, Early Years’ executive director.

Snuggs and Zalkind said it is a relatively low price tag compared to other stabilization strategies. Advocates’ main ask this legislative session is an annual $145 million for a child care subsidy floor.

In 2025, the average six-month supplement for WAGE$ recipients was $1,227, according to Early Years, and the turnover rate among participating programs was 13%. More than 4,000 educators received the supplements. There were 41,792 total staff members at licensed programs in September 2025.

In Nash and Edgecombe counties, Zalkind has prioritized the program, providing an average supplement of $1,320. The region’s turnover rate is 8%.

Research backs this approach. A Virginia study from 2019 gave early childhood teachers $1,500 in three installments over eight months. In child care settings, turnover decreased from 30% to 15%.

How can we reduce turnover among early childhood educators? Pay them more, a study finds

Turnover disrupts the child-teacher relationships, which experts say are key to positive child outcomes.

A state investment in wage supplements would ensure teachers have access to the supplements whether or not their local community has the resources. Zalkind said DEPC invests around $250,000 per year in the program, but that she does not know if the organization will continue to be able to support the program because of other funding cuts.

Access is not the only reason supplements would benefit families, Zalkind said. She pointed to the quality of care, too.

“If we can stabilize the teaching workforce, that is a systemic step in the right direction that at least starts to give people confidence that this teacher has been here for five years, 10 years — they know what they’re doing,” she said.

With quality rating assessments paused in recent years, Zalkind said she is worried families have lacked reliable ways to assess program quality.

“You may have a five-star license on your wall, but that may have been issued in 2018,” she said.

The state Child Care Commission has created new quality rating rules over the last two years, and the Division of Child Development and Early Education has started rolling out that system.

“I’m telling my friends with young kids right now, if you’re trying to evaluate quality, ask what their turnover rate in that center is,” Zalkind said.

Wage supplements are one of several strategies for recruiting and retaining child care teachers that localities and state-level leaders are researching and piloting.

Early childhood apprenticeships have popped up across the state to provide teachers with opportunities to further their education while working. Some schools and districts have created pre-apprenticeships, which provide pathways for high schoolers interested in early childhood education to enter the field debt-free.

Local Smart Start partnerships and community colleges have created child care academies, which offer accelerated tracks for individuals interested in working in child care to receive training at no cost.

And Gov. Josh Stein’s bipartisan early childhood task force is researching what it would take for child care teachers to receive free child care for their own children and access other non-salary benefits.

The legislature has not yet passed a comprehensive state budget this year, and has not allocated any new funding for child care.

At the DEPC event, Alexandra Sirota, executive director of the nonprofit NC Budget and Tax Center, said the state’s tax structure, including personal and corporate income tax cuts, is limiting its ability to address child care needs.

“We can imagine a different context for our neighbors,” Sirota said. “We can imagine a different opportunity landscape in our state, and we can ask corporations who are profitable because of the business they’re doing in our state to contribute to that.”