Childcare Substitute Statistics 2026: Job Market, Pay, Demand & Workforce

Childcare Hires had 340 open childcare substitute listings from 82 employers on October 13, 2026.

151 were first posted in the previous 14 days and 221 in the previous 30 days.

At least 63.8% of childcare substitute listings were part-time on October 13, 2026.

Listings that name no schedule are counted as full-time, so the real part-time share is likely higher.

To browse the openings themselves, see all childcare substitute listings.

Employers hiring childcare substitutes on Childcare Hires advertise a median of $18.50 an hour across 43 employers on October 13, 2026; this is advertised pay, not earnings.

BLS publishes no separate wage for childcare substitutes; the median annual wage for all childcare workers (SOC 39-9011), the occupation that includes them, was $34,980 in May 2025 (BLS OEWS).

For more on what childcare substitutes earn, see the childcare substitute salary guide.

California had the most open childcare substitute listings on October 13, 2026, with 102 (30% of the national total).

Texas followed with 31 (9.1%).

To browse the openings in one state, start with childcare substitute openings in California.

82 employers had open childcare substitute listings on Childcare Hires on October 13, 2026, and the five largest posted 53.5% of them.

47 employers (57.3%) had exactly one open childcare substitute listing.

Child care services employed 269,970 childcare workers in May 2025, 26.9% of the industry's wage-and-salary jobs, with a median annual wage of $34,170 (BLS OEWS, NAICS 6244).

The child care services industry employed 1,004,990 wage-and-salary workers in May 2025, with a median annual wage of $36,580 across all its occupations (BLS OEWS, NAICS 6244).

For BLS employment projections and annual openings, see the childcare and preschool teacher job outlook.

For why centers struggle to fill these roles, see our childcare staffing shortage analysis.

For how to enter the field, see the childcare substitute career guide.

Listing figures are computed from every active, paid childcare substitute listing on Childcare Hires at the time shown, and refreshed every six hours.

Listings on a job board are not a random sample of all childcare substitute jobs, so read them as a picture of current hiring, not of total employment.

Advertised pay is the midpoint of the range an employer posts, or its single figure, and hourly and annual postings are never converted into each other.

The headline is the employer median: each employer’s own median, then the median across employers, so a chain posting hundreds of openings counts once.

A pay figure needs at least 30 listings from 10 employers and is withheld when one employer posted more than 50% of them.

Federal figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and are quoted as published, with the year in each sentence.