Childcare Costs in Wisconsin (2024): What Full-Time Care Really Costs, by Source
This page covers childcare prices in Wisconsin, drawn from Child Care Aware of America’s 2024 Affordability Analysis, based on its January 2025 survey of the state’s Child Care Resource & Referral network. Wisconsin’s figures were not flagged as backfilled in that report, so what follows are current, survey-reported prices broken out by a child’s age and by care type, center-based versus family child care, rather than estimates.
Average annual price of full-time child care in Wisconsin
| Age group | Center-based care | Family child care (home-based) |
|---|---|---|
| Infant | $17,963 · $1,497/mo | $12,319 · $1,027/mo |
| Toddler | $18,239 · $1,520/mo | $14,743 · $1,229/mo |
| 4-Year-Old | $15,039 · $1,253/mo | $11,088 · $924/mo |
| Before/After School | $6,226 · $519/mo | $6,568 · $547/mo |
| Full-Time Summer | Not reported | Not reported |
Wisconsin’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 year of center-based infant care in Wisconsin costs $17,963. For a family with two children in center-based care, the annual bill of $33,002 runs 163.17% more than the state’s annualized rent and 66.47% more than the annualized mortgage payment, among the largest housing gaps in this data set. Center-based infant care alone is 77.3% more than a year of average in-state public tuition and fees ($10,132). That $17,963 infant care price is 13.9% of the married-couple median income and 44.4% of the single-parent 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 Wisconsin-specific figure. CCAoA’s report applies this single national number when ranking every state’s childcare-workforce affordability, so it is NOT evidence about Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin
This page relies on one statewide number for Wisconsin, but the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices would break these costs down by county, which is a more precise picture for families comparing specific parts of the state. We weren’t able to pull that county-level data this pass, so everything here reflects Child Care Aware of America’s statewide figures only.
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).
