How to hire a childcare substitute: qualifications, pay, where to recruit and how to screen

A childcare substitute is the adult you hire for coverage: the teacher out sick, the assistant at a training day, the floater pulled into the office for the morning. The hire is not a vacancy fill — it is capacity. Before you write a posting, decide what your center actually needs: which seats a substitute may hold in your rooms, how much notice you can give, and how many days a month the need is real.

Then pick the shape of the seat. Single-day coverage on call is one job: the person arrives, follows the room's plan, and leaves the room as they found it. Long-term coverage for a leave or an open seat is another: the person runs the room for weeks. The second seat may carry your state's requirements for the title it fills — what a substitute must show to hold each seat is your state child care licensing agency's call — so screen the two differently and post them separately.

Expect the need to be continuous, because rooms empty on a schedule nobody publishes. There is no single national turnover rate for center staff: published estimates range from under 10 percent to 46 percent depending on method and state. The range tracks the setting — a Minneapolis Fed analysis of the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education found center teacher turnover of 21.1 percent in "all other" centers versus 7.7 percent in school-sponsored centers, and 25.3 percent in centers serving subsidized children versus 15.8 percent in those that do not. Every one of those departures is a room that needs an adult tomorrow.

Keep the lanes straight: this page is the employer playbook for the substitute seat. Our guide to hiring for your childcare center walks the whole staffing loop across every role, and the candidate-side view — what the work is day to day and who tends to take it — is our description of what a childcare substitute does.

The rule-maker is your state child care licensing agency. What a substitute must show before holding a seat — minimum age, education and experience, any pre-service or orientation training, and a cleared background check — is set state by state, and the list can differ by title or seat. A substitute supporting an assistant teacher is not automatically on the same list as a substitute filling a lead teacher's seat, and a rule you read in another state's posting is not your rule. Ask your licensing agency what applies to substitutes in the seats you need covered, for the age bands you serve.

One federal piece follows the seat across state lines: the background check. Under the federal CCDF background-check rules (45 CFR 98.43, administered by ACF), at least one fingerprint check result must be back before a prospective staff member begins work, and they work under constant supervision until every result is in. That is the federal rule the substitute hire runs on: the sick call that lands an hour before opening cannot be covered by someone whose fingerprints were never submitted. Build the bench before you need it — people already cleared and on file — and treat a same-day stranger as the exception your licensing contact has told you how to handle. Our step-by-step guide to the background-check steps walks the sequence.

When you write the posting, phrase the requirement the way the rule works: "meets [your state]'s licensing requirements for the seat," plus any credential your own program chooses to prefer. Verify credentials against the issuer — the registry or credential system your state runs, or the organization that issued them — rather than taking the résumé's word for them.

Confirm before you post: qualification minimums, training requirements and background-check steps for substitutes are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency, and they change. This page deliberately does not restate any state's hour counts, ages or deadlines. Confirm the current requirements for the seats and age bands you are covering before they go into a posting or a start date.

Name your line before you set the rate. BLS's OEWS survey publishes no childcare substitute occupation of its own, so there is no "substitute median" to quote — pay guidance for this seat has to be framed by the nearest occupation. That occupation is childcare workers (SOC 39-9011): a U.S. median of $16.82 per hour ($34,980 per year) in May 2025, with the 10th percentile at $11.66 and the 90th at $22.12. Read it as an anchor, not an answer — the line spans every childcare-worker job in every industry, including schools and homes.

The industry cut sits closer to your world: within private child care services (NAICS 6244), the May 2025 median for childcare workers is $16.43 per hour. Still an occupation line, never a substitute rate. Price the seat against two things the survey cannot see: your own staff pay, because a substitute who fills a teacher's seat all week will compare their rate to your teacher's, and your local market, because the centers around you recruit the same subs you do.

Decide the structure on purpose. Hourly or a defined full-day rate. Pay for the scheduled shift or only the hours worked. The same pay cycle as your staff, so a substitute's bank account does not depend on remembering which center paid when. And one rate for the same seat, so the person covering the infant room twice in a week is not negotiating twice. Our research found no industry standard for any of these — what matters is that the rate, the cycle and the seat are stated before the first shift.

Payroll structure is a classification question: an analysis our research read — an analytical application of the DOL's worker-classification test, not a DOL statement — argues that substitutes a center schedules into its classrooms are very unlikely to pass an independent-contractor test, because the center controls the work. State tests can be stricter still. Treat every classification call as a question for employment counsel or your state labor agency, not a default on your onboarding form.

Two floors are not yours to set. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour for employers covered by the FLSA, and DOL's state minimum-wage table carries each state's rate alongside it — confirm which rate applies to you with your state labor department. And the posting itself is a pay decision: our research verified pay-in-posting laws in eight states — California (15 or more employees), Colorado (every posting, regardless of size), New York (four or more), Washington (15 or more), Illinois (15 or more), Minnesota (30 or more), Massachusetts (25 or more, since October 29, 2025) and Vermont (five or more). Other states are reported by trackers to have similar requirements; our research did not confirm them against primary sources, so a state missing from this list may still have one.

Confirm before you set the rate: which minimum wage applies, whether your posting must carry a range, and how the rate interacts with overtime are questions for your state labor department or employment counsel. Wage rules change; check them the week you post, not the week you remember.

The pool is real but it is not a list. BLS's OEWS survey counted 518,910 childcare workers (SOC 39-9011) and 478,780 preschool teachers except special education (SOC 25-2011) employed in the U.S. as of May 2025, across industries that include centers, schools and homes. What the counts cannot tell you is who answers at six on a Tuesday morning within fifteen minutes of your door. That part is local, and you build it rather than browse it.

Work the channels where substitute candidates already are:

• Boards built for the vertical. A board that lists only early-education jobs puts your opening in front of teachers, assistants and floaters already looking for this work — you can post your childcare substitute job on ChildcareHires.
• Your own roster. Former staff who left on good terms, aides and floaters who want extra days, and staff referrals are the candidates who already know where the diaper pails are. Ask your teachers who else should be on your list.
• Training pipelines. Early childhood education departments and credential programs at local colleges finish students and career changers every term. Ask them to circulate your posting.
• Your state's early childhood system. Ask your state's early childhood professional development or workforce registry whether it runs a job board, and ask your local child care resource and referral agency which channels centers near you actually hire subs from.
• Pooled coverage. Ask your state child care agency or your CCR&R office whether a regional substitute pool or staffing service operates near you. Our research did not verify what such programs pay, so treat any rate you hear as a local fact to check, not a benchmark.

Then look at the market from the candidate's side: browse childcare substitute jobs the way an applicant would, and check whether your posting would stand up next to the ones around it. Our guide to where to post the job compares the channels in detail.

The ad shapes the pool. State the rate, the seats the substitute may hold, and the deal that matters most to this candidate: how much notice you give, and how many days a month you can actually offer. Keep it lawful — a job ad that shows a preference based on a protected trait is illegal under the laws the EEOC enforces, and its own examples are ads seeking "females" or "recent college graduates," so "young and energetic" and "female substitute" are out. Describe physical demands — lifting, floor work, diapering — as the job's own essential functions; under the ADA, physical requirements in a job description should describe essential functions, and accommodation for applicants with disabilities is required unless it causes significant difficulty or expense.

Screen in layers — paper first, phone next, classroom last — so each round buys more information than the one before it. For a substitute seat, the layer that matters most is the scenario interview: the skill you are buying is walking into a room you have never seen and holding it.

1. Verify the paper. Confirm credentials with the issuer, and check references with people who watched the candidate work a classroom. A previous director's account of how the candidate handled a room that was not theirs is worth more than the résumé's adjectives.
2. Phone-screen against the deal. State the rate, the seats, the notice expectations and the days you can actually offer. A sub may be juggling several centers at once; honest arithmetic here saves everyone a first day that was never going to work.
3. Interview with scenarios, not slogans. Ask what they do when they arrive and no lesson plan is out; how they settle a child who will not settle for a stranger; where they position themselves for supervision in a room they have never stood in; when they ask a colleague rather than guess at your routine. Score answers for specifics — supervision, positive guidance, safe routines — because specifics are what transfer to your classrooms.
4. Run a working interview. A paid classroom trial shows the habits no answer will: whether the candidate introduces themselves to the room, follows the plan they were handed, and asks for help early instead of late. Keep it paid and structured, and schedule it after any checks your state requires.

Keep every question job-related. Under the laws the EEOC enforces, employers may not discriminate on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation and transgender status), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information, or retaliate against someone for asserting those rights. Disability-related questions are off-limits until after a job offer, and the EEOC's guidance for everything pre-offer is the same: ask only what you need to judge qualifications, and skip anything that would surface a protected trait — including side channels like requesting applicant photos.

Then score like-for-like. One sheet, used for every candidate on the day you meet them: what they did in the trial, what the references actually said, and whether they meet the requirements your state sets for the seat. A bench full of "I liked her" notes will not tell you who to call first on a Tuesday at six.

The calendar has a shape even though the clocks are yours and your agency's to run. Treat this as the sequence, not a schedule.

1. Post with the rate, the seats, and the notice expectations up front. Better-sorted applications are the cheapest time savings on this list.
2. Reply in days, not weeks. A substitute candidate may be weighing several centers at once; slow replies hand your bench to the center down the street.
3. Interview and working interview in the same week. Block the classroom trial while the scenario answers are fresh.
4. References and credential verification in parallel. Start them the day the trial goes well, not after you have decided.
5. The background check runs on the state's clock. Under the federal CCDF rules, at least one fingerprint check result must be back before work begins, with constant supervision until every result is in; what your state's check includes, how long it takes, and what supervision applies while results are pending are questions for your state child care licensing agency — our guide to the background-check steps walks the sequence. Ask exactly when a substitute may start, in which seats, and under what supervision before every result is back.
6. Orient before the first day, not during it. Whatever orientation or pre-service training your state requires belongs inside the paid schedule — alongside the things only your center can teach: your routines, your families, your rooms.
7. First day, then a short check-in that week. A substitute who felt abandoned on day one does not answer the next call.

The posting and your reply speed are the parts of the timeline you control. The check is the part you do not — which is why the pool, not the posting, is the real unit of this hire: a substitute already cleared, oriented and proven in one of your rooms starts when the phone rings.

Confirm before you set a start date: what work a new substitute may do, in which seats, and under what supervision before every background-check result is back are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency. Ask before the sick call lands, not during it.

A substitute you have trained is an asset; the bench of them is the asset. Keep it warm on purpose. Place the same substitute in the same rooms so they learn your routines and your children learn their face. Pay on the same cycle as your staff. Hand over the room's plan the day before when coverage is planned, and keep a one-page plan in every room for the days it is not. A substitute who has to rebuild the room from zero every visit stops picking up the phone.

Treat substitutes as staff, not as weather. Include them in the paid trainings your state requires, put their names on the schedule like everyone else's, and invite them to the parts of program life that make a center feel like a workplace — being part of a team is the thing a per-diem schedule does not include, so offer it deliberately.

Convert on purpose too. A substitute who has covered ten days in your building is the cheapest strong interview you will ever run: you have seen the work, the references are done, the check is on file. When a permanent seat opens, call your bench before you post the job.

And know what retention is worth. The strongest causal evidence in this research is money at the decision point: the Treasury Department reported in 2021 that in a University of Virginia experiment offering child care teachers $1,500 to stay, departures were cut nearly in half, to 13 percent, versus nearly a quarter of non-recipients leaving within eight months. You run smaller versions of that lever all the time — a rate review that lands before the resignation does, paid training time, placements steady enough to plan a month around.

Then run the system, not only the gestures: track which rooms generate the most last-minute calls and fix the cause instead of refilling the seat, ask the substitutes who stop answering why, and keep the bench large enough that no single "yes" is load-bearing.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Qualification minimums, training requirements, background checks and ratios are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency; wage, posting and classification questions belong with your state labor department or employment counsel. Confirm the current rules there before you post, hire or schedule.