Can You Live on a Daycare Teacher Salary?

Start with what the job pays at the middle.

In May 2025, childcare workers — the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation (SOC 39-9011) that covers aides, assistants and many lead teachers in centers — earned a median of $16.82 an hour, or $34,980 a year.

Preschool teachers (SOC 25-2011), the lead-teacher title BLS tracks separately, earned a median of $18.34 an hour, or $38,140 a year.

Half of each occupation earned less than its median.

The federal wage data above comes as hourly and annual figures, and gross is not take-home.

Taxes, and any deductions for health coverage or retirement, come out before your deposit does — our research has no net-pay data, so we will not invent a net figure.

The monthly number you can trust is the one you build from your own offer: the hourly rate on the letter, times your weekly hours, spread over the calendar.

The calendar matters.

BLS notes that many public-school preschool teachers work a traditional 10-month school year, while daycare settings may run year-round with longer hours — one reason a school-year salary and a daycare salary are not directly comparable as a monthly deposit.

The spread inside each occupation is wide, and it changes the budget more than the median suggests.

Childcare workers at the 10th percentile earned $11.66 an hour — $24,260 a year — while the 90th percentile earned $22.12 an hour ($46,010).

Preschool teachers run higher at both ends: $13.94 at the 10th percentile ($28,990) and $29.52 at the 90th ($61,390).

One boundary on all of these numbers: they describe center and school employees.

BLS reports that 24% of childcare workers were self-employed and 17% worked in private households in 2025 — groups the OEWS wage survey does not cover — so none of these medians describes what a home daycare owner nets.

Whether the wage clears your bills is, first, a housing question, and the starkest published answer is pessimistic.

CSCCE's 2024 Early Childhood Workforce Index, using 2022 Census data, calculates that early educator wages do not meet a living wage for a single adult with no children in any state, with state median wages that year ranging from $10.60 an hour in Louisiana to $18.23 in the District of Columbia.

The same index reports that 43% of early educator families rely on public safety-net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.

Both figures are CSCCE's, drawn from a different data series than the BLS numbers on this page — treat them as a separate measure of the same squeeze, not a contradiction of it.

The medians also hide a spread, and the spread is where the math starts to work.

The same preschool-teacher occupation paid a median of $27.29 an hour — $56,750 a year — in elementary and secondary schools in May 2025, against $17.72 an hour ($36,850) in child care services.

By ownership, preschool teachers in local-government schools earned $61,300 and those in private elementary and secondary schools $44,290.

For childcare workers the setting gap is narrower but real: $17.80 an hour in elementary and secondary schools against $16.43 ($34,170 a year) in child care services.

Where a classroom sits in the funding system shows up in the paycheck.

To test your own address, pair a local wage with a local cost.

State-by-state medians for the childcare titles are on the daycare teacher salary by state page.

Then look up your county in MIT's Living Wage Calculator (data last updated February 15, 2026), which publishes living wages by state, metro and county for 12 family types — our research stores no state-by-state living-wage figures, so the calculator is the source to use.

Run the figure for your household type against the local median before you accept an offer: the same wage is a different budget for a single adult than for a two-income household, and benefits such as employer health coverage carry real value the hourly rate does not show.

The medians are where they are for structural reasons, and we take them up in why childcare workers are paid so little.

Whether the field is worth entering anyway is a different question; is childcare a good career weighs it.

The wage is not the only money in the picture.

Four kinds of programs change the monthly math, and they work differently: some pay you directly, some cut your childcare bill, some cancel debt.

• State supplements and bonuses paid to the worker. Education-based supplements sit on top of wages. North Carolina's Child Care WAGE$ program, run by Early Years, Inc., pays supplements to teachers, directors and family child care providers working with children birth to 5 in participating counties, after each completed six-month commitment period at the same program — Early Years reports an average six-month supplement of $1,285. Maine's Early Childhood Educator Workforce Salary Supplement pays monthly stipends through licensed programs by registry tier, $240 to $540 a month. Our guide to state wage supplements and bonuses lists every program we could verify.
• Care for your own child. For a teacher with young children, an employer discount on tuition can outweigh a small raise. KinderCare's FY2025 10-K, for example, says it offers eligible full-time employees discounted tuition for their children. What discounts are worth, and the state child care assistance routes for people who work in the field, are covered in our guide to staff childcare discount programs.
• Student-loan forgiveness. If you carry federal student debt, forgiveness can move the math more than any supplement: Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after 120 qualifying monthly payments while you work full-time for a qualifying employer, such as a government organization or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit; for-profit organizations, including for-profit centers, do not qualify. Our guide to student loan forgiveness for early childhood educators takes it from there.
• Worker tax credits. Colorado's Early Childhood Educator Income Tax Credit paid $852 to $1,705 for tax year 2024 by credential level, with income and program-rating conditions, and Nebraska's refundable School Readiness Tax Credit pays $2,300 to $3,500 by professional-record level, CPI-adjusted from tax year 2025 and subject to an aggregate cap. Eligibility details are in our early childhood educator tax credit guide.

Every lever in the wage data points at changing something about the job rather than waiting for the median to move.

• Change the building. The same preschool-teacher occupation earned a $56,750 median in elementary and secondary schools in May 2025 against $36,850 in child care services, and $61,300 in local-government schools. School-based classrooms are the clearest route in the data — our pre-K teacher guide covers the move and its requirements.
• Change the rung. Center directors (SOC 11-9031) earned a national median of $28.51 an hour — $59,300 a year — in May 2025. The classroom ladder runs assistant to lead teacher to director.
• Build the credential. The supplement and tax-credit programs above are keyed to education, credential or registry levels, so the same credential that qualifies you for a higher rung can also qualify you for the supplement attached to it. BLS notes the CDA — which must be renewed every 3 years — is the credential states most often require of childcare workers who need a national credential; our CDA credential guide explains how it works.
• Ask. Our research has no verified figure for typical raise sizes, so treat any raise you are promised as something to get in writing. Our guides to negotiating a childcare job offer and asking for a raise at a daycare cover both conversations.

When you compare offers, compare the whole package, not the headline rate: weekly hours, the calendar (year-round versus school year), health coverage, and whether the classroom is funded by tuition alone or by a program that carries a supplement or pay floor.

The childcare teacher jobs board shows what centers are hiring for right now.

This page is career information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Program amounts, eligibility and wage rules change — confirm current details with the state agency or program that administers them, and with the state child care licensing agency where a rule is involved.