Childcare Pay Scale: What Aides, Assistants, Lead Teachers and Directors Earn

Our research found no national starting-wage statistic for childcare.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes wage distributions for occupations — medians, means and percentiles — not starting salaries for new hires, so anyone comparing entry-level daycare pay has to read the distribution carefully instead of quoting a single beginner figure.

With no experience, the rung you are priced at is aide or assistant teacher, and the federal line that covers those jobs is childcare workers (SOC 39-9011).

In May 2025, childcare workers earned a national median of $16.82 an hour ($34,980 a year) and a mean of $16.84 ($35,030).

The spread around that median is wide.

The lowest-paid 10 percent of childcare workers earned under $11.66 an hour and the highest-paid 10 percent over $22.12 in May 2025 — and percentiles are not entry-level pay: the 10th percentile marks the wage below which the bottom tenth of earners in the occupation fall, which is not the same thing as a starting rate.

The practical floor for a first job is the minimum wage where you live.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour as of October 2026, and state minimums vary, with many higher than the federal level.

One scope note before quoting these numbers: OEWS medians describe wage-and-salary jobs only.

Childcare workers held about 1.0 million jobs in 2025 — 24 percent of them self-employed and 17 percent in private households, groups OEWS does not survey — so the figures do not describe home daycare owners or nannies.

A center's payroll is mostly classroom jobs.

In child day care services (NAICS 6244) in May 2025, preschool teachers held 34.6 percent of the industry's jobs, childcare workers 26.9 percent, teaching assistants 14.0 percent and center directors 6.0 percent — many aide and assistant seats for every director seat.

Read together, the pay scale looks like this in the same May 2025 release:

Two kinds of published starting salary do exist on the program side.

Pennsylvania's Pre-K Counts guidelines, revised July 2026, recommend a starting lead-teacher wage of $45,000 per 180-day school year ($33.33 an hour on 7.5-hour days) — a recommendation the guidelines encourage programs toward, not a statewide wage mandate.

Georgia Pre-K, covered below, publishes an actual salary scale with an entry step.

The aide salary page shows the broader teaching-assistant figure (SOC 25-9045, annual only) with no state breakdown; state-by-state childcare-worker (39-9011) medians are on the daycare teacher salary page linked below.

The direct answer: no verified national figure measures how much more a lead teacher makes than an assistant at the same center.

Raise sizes, sign-on bonuses and lead-versus-assistant differentials in job listings have no verified source in the research behind this page — the gap is each center's own to set, and no dataset in this research names it.

What can be compared honestly is the two federal occupations the middle rungs sit in.

Childcare workers (SOC 39-9011), the line covering aides, assistant teachers and many center lead teachers, earned a May 2025 median of $16.82 an hour; preschool teachers (SOC 25-2011), the line covering lead and pre-K teachers, earned $18.34 an hour ($38,140 a year).

These are two different federal occupations, so the space between the two medians is not a same-job raise.

Inside the center industry, the pair tightens.

In child day care services (NAICS 6244), childcare workers earned a median of $16.43 an hour ($34,170 a year) and preschool teachers $17.72 an hour ($36,850 a year) in May 2025 — same industry, still two occupation codes.

Teaching assistants are a separate federal occupation (SOC 25-9045), with a May 2025 median of $36,780 a year, and BLS publishes annual wages only for that line — no hourly figure.

It is not a daycare assistant-teacher number: 72 percent of the teaching-assistant occupation works in K-12 public schools, so treat it as the school-side category, not center pay.

Where a rule does set lead-versus-assistant dollars, it is a program condition rather than market data.

Illinois Smart Start Workforce Grants set FY27 Round 1 (July–September 2026) wage floors for grant-funded center classrooms: lead teachers $19.25 an hour in Group 1A counties (including Cook, DuPage and Lake), $18.50 in Group 1B and $18.25 in Group 2, against $18.00, $17.25 and $17.00 for assistant teachers in the same county groups.

The assistant teacher salary page carries the broader 25-9045 teaching-assistant figure with no state breakdown, and the daycare teacher salary page lists the state-level medians for childcare workers (39-9011).

The director line has the highest median of the three center occupations.

Education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare (SOC 11-9031), the line covering center directors, earned a national median of $28.51 an hour ($59,300 a year) in May 2025, with a mean of $31.15 ($64,800) and a 10th-to-90th percentile spread of $38,580 to $98,240.

Where a director sits moves the number.

Directors in child day care services earned a median of $58,090 a year in May 2025, while directors employed by local-government schools earned $90,950 — one reason the same career looks different from a private center and a school-based program.

Assistant director is not one of the federal occupation lines cited on this page, and the research behind it found no verified pay figure for the title.

Centers that use it set the rate on their own schedules; a specific number attached to the title online is a posting, not a statistic.

The director rung is also where pay structure — salary versus hourly — becomes a wage-law question.

Under federal wage-hour rules in effect on October 5, 2026, the white-collar exemption salary level is $684 a week, and a director can qualify for exemption as an academic administrator when the primary duty is administration directly related to instruction and the pay is at least $684 a week or the established entrance salary for teachers at the establishment.

Federal rules count nursery-school programs as elementary education only "in some States," so a typical licensed center is not automatically an educational establishment and its teachers are generally non-exempt unless state law treats the program as elementary education; confirm a specific center's situation with the U.S. Department of Labor or employment counsel.

The director salary page lists the state-level medians BLS publishes for the 11-9031 line.

What unlocks each rung is set by the state child care licensing agency that regulates centers — staff qualifications are licensing rules, and they vary by state.

On top of those minimums, a group of state programs attach actual dollar amounts to each credential step, and those programs are where the ladder's credentials most directly become money.

The credential to know first is the Child Development Associate (CDA), issued by the Council for Professional Recognition.

BLS notes the CDA must be renewed every 3 years and is the credential states most often require of childcare workers who need a national credential.

Degrees gate the upper rungs.

BLS says preschool teachers typically need at least an associate degree, and public-school preschool teachers generally need a bachelor's degree and an early childhood license.

In Head Start, where the staff standards come from the Office of Head Start's federal rules, BLS summarizes the bar this way: center-based preschool teachers need at least an associate degree, and at least 50 percent of Head Start preschool teachers nationwide must hold a bachelor's degree in early childhood education or a related field.

Four state programs put a price on each step of that education ladder:

• North Carolina WAGE$, run by Early Years, Inc., pays education-based salary supplements to teachers, directors and family child care providers working with children birth to 5 in participating counties. Eligibility requires an education level on the WAGE$ scale, at least 10 hours a week, and earnings at or below a local income cap of $19, $23 or $25 an hour set by the local Smart Start partnership; Early Years reports an average six-month supplement of $1,285.
• Illinois Great START pays a wage supplement every six months to practitioners with college coursework who stay with the same employer; applicants must work 15 or more hours a week, earn no more than $24.00 an hour and $49,920 a year, and be Gateways Registry members.
• Maine's Early Childhood Educator Workforce Salary Supplement pays monthly stipends through licensed programs by MRTQ registry level: $240 a month at registry Levels 1–4, $360 at Levels 5–6 and $540 at Levels 7–8; staff at Level 0 are not eligible.
• Colorado attaches an income tax credit — not wages — to its ECE Professional Credential from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood: 2024 amounts were $852 (ECP I), $1,136 (ECP II) and $1,705 (ECP III–VI), for filers with federal AGI of $75,000 or less ($150,000 joint) with six months at a program rated at least Level 1 in Colorado Shines.

Two jurisdictions go further than supplements and publish pay rules that read like a career ladder: one sets minimum salaries by role and credential, the other runs an experience-based salary scale.

District of Columbia. The Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, administered by OSSE, sets FY26 minimum salaries effective January 1, 2026 that rise with each credential: an assistant teacher with a CDA and a lead teacher with a CDA are both floored at $48,736 ($23.43 an hour); a lead teacher with an ECE associate degree or 12 ECE credits at $60,678 ($29.17); and a lead teacher with an ECE bachelor's, or a bachelor's plus 12 ECE credits, at $71,010 ($34.14).

Three cautions keep this honest: OSSE cut the minimums effective January 1, 2026 under the Early Childhood Educator Pay Scales Emergency Amendment Act of 2025 and warned that employers may lower educators' pay from that date; facilities are not required to join the fund; and participants must be OSSE-licensed and agree to pay at least the minimums unless OSSE approves a waiver.

Georgia Pre-K. The state publishes an actual salary schedule for lead teachers: in FY2027 (July 2026–June 2027), $41,717 base for a lead with an ECE bachelor's (T-1), rising with experience to $56,812; up to $83,480 for T-7 certification at step L6 (21+ years); grandfathered associate-degree leads start at $30,949.86.

Assistant teachers are funded at $25,741.35 in 2026–27.

The scale reaches private child care providers too: DECAL calculates private-site lead and assistant pay from the same schedule, prorated on a 190-day calendar (180 instructional days plus 10 planning), and the teachers remain employees of the provider.

DECAL credits the move to the K-12 salary scale in state fiscal year 2025 with a 16 percent raise for leads and a $5,551 increase for assistants.

Georgia adds a bonus tied to program quality on top of the scale: the Quality Rated Workforce Bonus pays $500 a year per eligible staff member at 1-, 2- or 3-star Quality Rated programs — DECAL announced it April 1, 2025 with about $17 million a year from CCDF.

Eligibility requires full-time on-site status, 30 or more hours a week (15 or more for school-age-only programs) and at least 90 days at the program, and the bonus may be taxable.

Read all of these as program rules, not market medians: they set floors, scales and bonuses for specific classrooms and program years, and they sit on top of whatever wage the center itself posts.

The honest answer first: no verified national figure describes how long the aide-to-lead or lead-to-director climb takes, or how big a typical raise is when a step happens — raise sizes, sign-on bonuses and step differentials in listings have no verified source in this research.

Promotion timing is each center's own call, and outside the program floors and scales described above, the pay at each rung is whatever the center's schedule says.

What the sourced programs do show is how fast the pay-relevant steps move once you take them.

Credential-linked money starts when you hold the credential: DC's minimum salaries apply by role and credential, Maine's stipends arrive monthly, and the six-month-cycle programs pay WAGE$ after each completed six-month commitment period at the same program — two payments a year if you are eligible all 12 months — with Great START on the same every-six-months rhythm for staying with the same employer.

Where an experience scale exists, the top of the ladder is decades away.

Georgia Pre-K's lead-teacher schedule does not reach its final step (L6, at T-7 certification) until 21 or more years.

The top rung is also structurally small.

BLS projects about 66,700 preschool-teacher openings a year from 2025 to 2035, against about 5,200 a year for preschool and childcare center directors — the field has far more classroom seats than leadership seats.

This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. Wage floors, salary scales, supplements and tax-credit amounts change every program year — confirm current amounts and eligibility with the program administrator or the state child care licensing agency named, and take wage-and-overtime questions to the U.S. Department of Labor or employment counsel.