Why are child care costs rising so much so fast?
BOSTON - Inflation appears to be slowly ticking in the right direction, but not when it comes to child care costs.
Anyone sending kids to day care knows that it can be a huge chunk of the family budget. Nationally, the average cost is about $10,000 a year, but it's more than double that here in Massachusetts. In Middlesex and Norfolk counties it's $26,000 a year, the third highest in the nation.
The US Labor Department reports that average price of pre-school and day care is up 6% from last near and nearly double the overall inflation rate of 3.2%.
Part of the problem is increasing labor costs and rising demand with more parents going back to the office post-pandemic.
Another issue is some providers will also be taking a financial hit this fall.
"There was federal assistance, pandemic era assistance for child care providers that is expiring this fall," explained Caitlin Owens, a senior policy reporter at Axios who has studied this problem. "So, there's already warning that thousands of child care providers could close and that could leave millions of children without any care."
There is help on the way for some families who qualify for a new federal program. It will limit child care payments for working families at no more than seven percent of a family's income.