The preschool teacher job outlook is steady: BLS projects 4% employment growth from 2025 to 2035 and about 66,700 openings a year.
For childcare workers — one of the two federal categories daycare classroom titles are counted under — employment is projected to decline 2% over the same decade, yet about 150,300 openings a year remain, all of them from replacement needs.
Here is what those numbers do and do not mean.
Projected growth for preschool teachers and childcare workers
The outlook splits in two because the federal government counts this field as two occupations.
BLS treats preschool teachers (SOC 25-2011) and childcare workers (SOC 39-9011) as separate categories, and job titles do not map cleanly onto them: O*NET lists "Daycare Teacher", "Infant Teacher" and "Toddler Teacher" among childcare worker titles, while "Pre-Kindergarten Teacher" and "Montessori Preschool Teacher" appear under preschool teachers — and "Infant Teacher" and "Toddler Teacher" show up under both codes.
The title on a job posting does not decide the category.
The 2025-to-2035 projections point in opposite directions.
Preschool teachers held 583,200 jobs in 2025, and BLS projects 4% growth for the occupation over the decade.
Childcare workers held 1,010,300 jobs in 2025, and BLS projects their employment to decline 2% by 2035 — about 19,900 jobs.
Read the decline for what it is: a projection about the total number of jobs in the childcare worker category, not a forecast that classroom hiring stops.
Openings keep coming either way, and they are the next section's subject.
If you are untangling which category a given title falls under, the daycare teacher career guide covers the role and how the federal categories map to real jobs.
Annual openings — and why turnover drives them
Openings are the number that matters most to a job seeker, and they stay large in both categories.
BLS projects about 150,300 openings for childcare workers each year, on average, over 2025-35, and it states plainly that all of them come from replacement needs.
Preschool teachers have about 66,700 openings a year, with 4% projected growth.
Replacement needs is BLS's term for hiring created when workers leave an occupation, as opposed to hiring created by growth in the number of positions.
In a category where total employment is projected to slip, openings are almost entirely churn: someone leaves, the role is refilled.
That churn is why the openings count stays high even while the projected headcount falls.
How fast childcare staff actually leave is not settled by one national number: published turnover estimates range from under 10% to 46% depending on method and state, which is why this page does not quote a single national turnover rate.
A federal number does exist at the program level: Head Start reported a 15% staff turnover rate in the 2023-2024 program year, which contributed to under-enrollment.
That is a Head Start figure for that program year, not a national rate for centers.
The pay those openings lead to is worth reading alongside them.
The May 2025 median was $34,980 per year for childcare workers (SOC 39-9011), or $16.82 an hour, and $38,140 per year for preschool teachers (SOC 25-2011), or $18.34 an hour.
The guide to why childcare pay is so low covers the structural reasons behind those medians, and the childcare teacher salary page lists median pay state by state.
Is there a shortage of daycare teachers?
None of the federal numbers above is a shortage measure: they are projected employment change and annual openings.
On those terms, the field is in constant refill: about 150,300 childcare worker openings a year even with employment projected to be 2% lower by 2035, and about 66,700 preschool teacher openings a year on 4% growth.
So is there a shortage of daycare teachers?
The openings data supports one solid statement: hiring need is persistent.
In the childcare worker category, every projected opening comes from replacement needs — refilling jobs workers leave — rather than from new positions.
It does not support a stronger national claim — measured turnover varies widely by method and state, and whether any one center or city is short-staffed is a local question the national numbers cannot answer.
For a job seeker, the practical test is local.
Browsing daycare teacher jobs shows which centers near you are hiring right now, which age bands they need covered, and what they ask for — more usefully than any national projection.
If you operate a center, the strategy side of this question — recruiting, retention and what to offer — is covered from the employer's perspective in the guide to hiring daycare teachers.
And if you are weighing the field for yourself, demand is only one input: the guide to is childcare a good career puts these openings numbers next to pay, workload and how fast you can start.
Where is demand highest — public pre-K or infant care?
Start with the honest limit: the projections on this page are published for whole occupations, so no number here ranks demand by classroom type.
What the data does show is where preschool teachers work now and how the biggest school-side alternative differs from centers.
Child daycare services is where the jobs are: BLS counted 65% of preschool teachers working there in 2025, ahead of educational services (state, local and private) at 16% and religious, grantmaking, civic and similar organizations at 13%.
The full settings breakdown — centers, Head Start, public pre-K, faith-based programs and more — is covered setting by setting in the guide to where childcare teachers work.
State-funded pre-K is the distinct school-side route: NIEER's 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook counts 63 state-funded preschool programs across 44 states and DC for the 2024-25 school year.
The school-side route asks more of teachers.
BLS says public-school preschool teachers generally need at least a bachelor's degree and a license to teach early childhood education, and NIEER's quality benchmarks for state pre-K include a bachelor's degree for lead teachers and a CDA or equivalent for assistants.
In 2024-25, 30 of the 63 programs met the lead-teacher bachelor's benchmark.
Pay differs by setting too, within the same occupation and data release: preschool teachers earned a May 2025 median of $52,800 in educational services (state, local and private) versus $36,850 in child daycare services.
Educational services is a broader category than public pre-K alone, so read it as the school-side industry, not a pre-K pay scale.
Infant care is the harder half of the question.
The projections on this page do not break out age bands, so there is no federal number here for infant-toddler demand.
What is verifiable is how the field treats the specialty: the Council for Professional Recognition issues a center-based Infant-Toddler CDA covering children birth to 36 months, separate from the preschool credential.
For licensed centers, staffing minimums for infant rooms come from the state's child care licensing agency, not from federal employment projections.
This page is career information based on federal employment projections and published program data — not licensing or legal advice. Confirm current staffing and qualification rules with your state's child care licensing agency.
Confirm staffing rules where you work