Childcare Costs in Pennsylvania (2024): What Full-Time Care Really Costs, by Source
This page covers Pennsylvania, using childcare price data from Child Care Aware of America’s “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis,” based on CCAoA’s January 2025 survey of state Child Care Resource & Referral networks. Pennsylvania’s prices were flagged in the source report as backfilled from an older state Market Rate Survey rather than the current CCR&R survey, so these figures are less current than states with fresh 2025 numbers, though they are still broken out by child’s age and type of care rather than estimated.
Average annual price of full-time child care in Pennsylvania
| Age group | Center-based care | Family child care (home-based) |
|---|---|---|
| Infant | $14,910 · $1,242/mo | $10,994 · $916/mo |
| Toddler | $14,180 · $1,182/mo | $10,428 · $869/mo |
| 4-Year-Old | $12,453 · $1,038/mo | $9,685 · $807/mo |
| Before/After School | $7,937 · $661/mo | $6,297 · $525/mo |
| Full-Time Summer | $2,645 · $220/mo | $2,099 · $175/mo |
Pennsylvania’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
In Pennsylvania, a year of center-based infant care costs $14,910. That is 96.24% more than the annualized cost of rent and 32.42% more than the annualized cost of a mortgage in the state. It runs 8.69% less than the average cost of a year of in-state public college tuition and fees. For a married-couple household, that $14,910 represents 11.5% of median income; for a single parent, it represents 40.2% of median income.
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 Pennsylvania-specific figure. CCAoA’s report applies this single national number when ranking every state’s childcare-workforce affordability, so it is NOT evidence about Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania
This page uses one statewide price for Pennsylvania rather than county-level detail. The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices would show how costs vary by county, and is generally the stronger source for local precision, but it could not be accessed for this page. So the figures here reflect the state as a whole, not any particular county or city.
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).
