Childcare Costs in Florida (2024): What Full-Time Care Really Costs, by Source
This page covers childcare prices in Florida, drawn from Child Care Aware of America’s “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis,” based on the organization’s January 2025 survey of state Child Care Resource & Referral networks. Florida’s figures were flagged in that report as backfilled from an older state Market Rate Survey rather than the current CCR&R survey, so they are somewhat less current than figures for other states, though they remain the real prices used here, broken out by child’s age and by type of care rather than estimated.
Average annual price of full-time child care in Florida
| Age group | Center-based care | Family child care (home-based) |
|---|---|---|
| Infant | $13,011 · $1,084/mo | $11,201 · $933/mo |
| Toddler | $11,461 · $955/mo | $10,185 · $849/mo |
| 4-Year-Old | $9,409 · $784/mo | $8,592 · $716/mo |
| Before/After School | $5,238 · $436/mo | $5,094 · $424/mo |
| Full-Time Summer | $2,619 · $218/mo | $2,547 · $212/mo |
Florida’s prices in this table are flagged by Child Care Aware of America as backfilled from an older state Market Rate Survey, not the current 2025 CCR&R survey — treat them as less current than states without this flag. Source: Child Care Aware of America, Tables I & II, “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis.” A cell reading “Not reported” means CCAoA did not publish a price for that age group and setting in this state — it is not zero and was not estimated.
What this actually means for a family’s budget
A year of center-based infant care in Florida runs $13,011. That is 19.46% more than the annualized cost of renting and 0.45% more than the annualized cost of a mortgage in the state. It also costs 104.5% more than the average in-state public college tuition and fees. For a married-couple family at the state’s median income, that infant care bill equals 11.5% of income; for a single parent at the single-parent median income, it equals 31.6%.
National context
This is the flat 2023 U.S. national average annual wage for childcare workers (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, occupation code 39-9011), not a Florida-specific figure. CCAoA’s report applies this single national number when ranking every state’s childcare-workforce affordability, so it is NOT evidence about Florida wages specifically. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023 Annual Mean Wage: Childcare Workers, bls.gov/oes/current/oes399011.htm)
What we don’t have for Florida
The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices would give county-level prices for Florida instead of a single statewide figure, and it is generally the stronger source for that kind of local detail. It could not be pulled for this page, so the numbers here reflect only the statewide figures reported by Child Care Aware of America.
How we built this page
Every figure above comes from Child Care Aware of America’s published “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis” report (Tables I, II, III, XI, and XII), which in turn cites U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 data for income and rent/mortgage figures, and BLS 2023 data for the national childcare-worker wage figure. Reused here under CCAoA’s own republishing terms, which require visible citation to Child Care Aware of America and a link to childcareaware.org — both are provided throughout this page.
- Child Care Aware of America, “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis”. Prices from CCAoA’s January 2025 survey of Child Care Resource & Referral State Networks.
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2023, Table B19126 (income) and related housing-cost tables.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023 Annual Mean Wage: Childcare Workers (occupation code 39-9011).
