Childcare Costs in Maryland (2024): What Full-Time Care Really Costs, by Source
Maryland childcare prices in this guide come 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 and Referral networks. The prices shown here are real, currently surveyed figures broken down by child age and by care setting, center-based and family child care, not estimates.
Average annual price of full-time child care in Maryland
| Age group | Center-based care | Family child care (home-based) |
|---|---|---|
| Infant | $25,321 · $2,110/mo | $15,919 · $1,327/mo |
| Toddler | $22,594 · $1,883/mo | $15,676 · $1,306/mo |
| 4-Year-Old | $15,601 · $1,300/mo | $13,416 · $1,118/mo |
| Before/After School | $10,226 · $852/mo | $8,505 · $709/mo |
| Full-Time Summer | Not reported | Not reported |
Maryland’s prices were not asterisked in the source report, meaning they are fresh survey-reported figures from the current CCR&R survey, not backfilled from an older survey. 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 full year of center-based infant care in Maryland costs $25,321, which is 104.73 percent more than the annualized cost of rent and 47.88 percent more than an annualized mortgage payment in the state. That same price is 126.97 percent higher than the average cost of a year of in-state public college tuition and fees. For a married couple earning the state’s median income, infant center care takes up 15.8 percent of that income, while for a single parent earning the median income for a single-parent household, it takes up 48.1 percent.
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 Maryland-specific figure. CCAoA’s report applies this single national number when ranking every state’s childcare-workforce affordability, so it is NOT evidence about Maryland 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 Maryland
This page relies on one statewide figure for Maryland rather than county-level detail. The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices would offer county-by-county prices and is generally the stronger source for local precision, but it could not be accessed for this page. Until it can be incorporated, the numbers here reflect only the statewide Child Care Aware of America figures.
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).
