Childcare Costs in New Jersey (2024): What Full-Time Care Really Costs, by Source
New Jersey’s childcare prices in this guide come from Child Care Aware of America’s “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis,” based on its January 2025 survey of state Child Care Resource and Referral networks. New Jersey’s figures were backfilled from an older state Market Rate Survey rather than the current CCR&R survey, so the prices on this page are less current than those shown for most other states. Even so, these are real reported numbers, broken out by age group and care type, not estimates.
Average annual price of full-time child care in New Jersey
| Age group | Center-based care | Family child care (home-based) |
|---|---|---|
| Infant | $20,213 · $1,684/mo | $12,502 · $1,042/mo |
| Toddler | $19,448 · $1,621/mo | $11,113 · $926/mo |
| 4-Year-Old | $17,503 · $1,459/mo | $11,113 · $926/mo |
| Before/After School | $5,990 · $499/mo | $7,960 · $663/mo |
| Full-Time Summer | $1,997 · $166/mo | $2,246 · $187/mo |
New Jersey’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 full year of center-based infant care in New Jersey costs $20,213. That is 90.14% more than the annualized cost of rent in the state and 12.78% more than the annualized cost of a mortgage. It also runs 18.56% higher than the average in-state public college tuition and fees. For a married couple at the state’s median income, that price is 12.1% of household income; for a single parent at the state’s median income, it is 45.1%.
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 New Jersey-specific figure. CCAoA’s report applies this single national number when ranking every state’s childcare-workforce affordability, so it is NOT evidence about New Jersey 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 New Jersey
This page reflects one statewide price for New Jersey. The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices would give county-level prices instead, which would better show how costs differ between areas like the New York City suburbs and southern New Jersey, and is the stronger source for local precision. It could not be accessed this pass, so the figures here are limited to the statewide numbers from 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).
