Message From the Start Strong NJ Co-chairs
We’re proud to share Blueprint for Affordable Child Care: New Jersey Doesn’t Work Without It.
This moment of new leadership and renewed opportunity in New Jersey brings the opportunity to strengthen an early learning system that’s foundational to economic vitality, workforce participation, and the well-being of children and families. As this blueprint makes clear, early learning — what high-quality child care is — isn’t a peripheral service. It’s essential infrastructure. Yet for too long, providers have been expected to deliver high-quality, affordable care without the necessary sustained public investment, workforce supports, and coordination.
Today’s families navigate a reality fundamentally different from generations past. Enormous pressures on time, finances, and work expectations threaten parents’ efforts to balance caregiving and earning a living. As this blueprint explains, the twin challenges of time pressures and high costs are too much for families to solve on their own. We need comprehensive public policy that includes sustained public investment.
Child care that’s inaccessible, unaffordable, or unstable hampers parents’ workforce participation, businesses’ productivity, and the broad economy. The consequences are felt by families with children, families planning for children, and communities seeking to grow and thrive. No serious conversation about economic opportunity, workforce stability, or community vitality is complete without addressing affordable, high-quality child care for every family that needs it.
Families across New Jersey deserve freedom of choice among high-quality early learning options, whether in child care centers, family child care homes, faith-based programs, or public preschool, so they can select the setting that best fits their values, schedules, and children. A strong system would offer quality, affordability, and choice in a diverse mixed-delivery landscape.
Over decades working in the early learning field, we’ve seen the extraordinary commitment and ingenuity of educators and providers. And we’ve lived the consequences of underfunded, fragmented, and short-term approaches. Those experiences — plus insights from policy leaders, advocates, early childhood educators, researchers, business partners, and community stakeholders — shaped the recommendations you’ll find in this blueprint.
You won’t find a one-size-fits-all solution. This blueprint provides an assessment of New Jersey’s early learning landscape and identifies essential conditions required for the system to function effectively: access to high-quality, affordable early learning for families; well-prepared, equitably compensated educators and staff; and long-term, sustainable funding that recognizes early learning is core public infrastructure. These elements are interconnected; progress in one area can’t be sustained without attention to the others.
Today, care for our youngest learners receives only a small fraction of public investment compared to other age groups, despite being the most expensive to provide and the most critical for early development. Besides placing pressure on families, providers, and the workforce, this misalignment undermines the stability of the entire early learning system.
We’re encouraged by the growing recognition of early learning as a shared public priority and eager to engage with state leaders at this pivotal time. We offer this blueprint as a tool to support dialogue and action.
We’re grateful to Start Strong NJ advisory group members, contributors, and partners who devoted time, expertise, and insight to this effort. Their work made this blueprint possible.
We look forward to partnering with leaders across sectors to create a New Jersey early learning system positioned not just to endure, but to thrive.
Winifred Smith-Jenkins
Advocates for Children of New Jersey
Meghan Tavormina
New Jersey Association for the Education of Young Children
INTRODUCTION
It’s About Time… and Money
People today live and work in a world that looks very different from even a decade ago. The pressures on families are enormous. Simply put, there never seems to be enough time — and everything costs more than it used to.
For working parents — especially those with children under age six — this “time and money” crunch is especially acute. Work schedules are increasingly unpredictable, caregiving responsibilities are constant, and household costs continue to rise. Parents are stretched thin as they juggle jobs, child-rearing, and daily life, often with little room for rest or recovery and no margin for error if something goes wrong. When families are forced to operate in survival mode, it becomes harder to care for children, stay healthy, and contribute fully at work, at home, and in their communities.
Over time, this strain weakens not only individual households but also New Jersey’s social and economic fabric. Families need greater control over their schedules, the ability to take time off when life demands it, and access to supports that reflect today’s realities. When parents have to work nonstop or piece together numerous jobs just to cover basic needs, that control disappears. Decisions about how to raise children — who cares for them when parents can be present, and what’s best for their family — are driven by necessity, not preference.
By the third decade of the 21st century, it’s clear that this time-and-money conundrum is too complex for families to solve on their own. Parents deserve the freedom to choose how they raise their children without constantly worrying about whether they can afford care or find it when they need it. That freedom depends on systems that work. Right now, too often, they don’t.
A COMMON SENSE CASE FOR ACTION
Why Child Care Is a Family, Business, and Economic Issue
New Jersey should be a place where all families and communities can thrive in a growing economy that offers opportunity, regardless of income, race, geography, or family structure. A place where residents can raise children, pursue careers, and build secure futures. And a place where all children get the strong start they need from their earliest years.
Yet, for too many families, one of the greatest barriers to stability and opportunity is the inability to find or afford high-quality child care. This isn’t about babysitting. Child care refers to nonparental care, usually provided by trained, dedicated early childhood educators who offer the nurturing, safety, and stimulation children need during the most critical years of development.
Families are often forced into an impossible choice: work and struggle to afford care, or stay home and sacrifice income, career advancement, and long-term financial security. Either option carries serious consequences. When parents cut back hours or leave the workforce, employers face staffing shortages, reduced productivity, and slowed growth. The ripple effects extend across industries and communities. When families stay at work but child care consumes an unsustainable share of household income, financial instability increases, workforce stress rises, and long-term earnings potential declines. Ultimately, this situation weakens New Jersey’s labor force, economic competitiveness, and tax base.
This is not a question of how parents “should” raise their children. As labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards said in a recent interview for the Burke Foundation’s Starting Early newsletter:
We get so caught up in “what is the role of the government?” and “what is the right type of motherhood?” when those are all distracting conversations. The result is that we hold ourselves back in the economy, in family well-being, and in investment in children — instead of committing to one important thing we can do.
That “one important thing” is investing in high-quality child care, especially for infants and toddlers. It supports families today, strengthens businesses, and lays the foundation for a healthier, more productive workforce tomorrow. Yet it remains one of the least supported pieces of our economic and social infrastructure.
+ THE MILITARY GETS IT
The Department of Defense provides child care because it understands that the armed forces’ readiness depends on reliable care. As the military workforce evolved to include more women, dual-military couples, and single parents, child care became essential to recruitment, retention, morale, and productivity. With nearly one million children having active-duty parents, DoD treats child care as mission-critical infrastructure that reduces absenteeism, improves performance, and strengthens long-term workforce stability. When child care is insufficient, missed duty time increases and retention suffers — especially among women and dual-military families. If child care is essential to national defense, it’s essential to the civilian workforce and the broader economy as well.
WHY IT MATTERS
FOR CHILDREN: Brain Development and Early Learning
Child care is more than a place for parents to leave their children while they work. The earliest years of life are the most important for brain development and learning. During this time, the brain forms more than a million neural connections every second, shaping how children will think, learn, and manage emotions throughout their lives.
As researchers at Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child explain, “brains are built from the bottom up.” Early experiences and relationships create the foundation for all later learning. Responsive, nurturing care — the everyday “serve-and-return” interaction between children and caring adults — strengthens the neural pathways that support language, problem-solving, and self-control.
High-quality early learning environments provide safety, consistency, rich language exposure, and opportunities for play and exploration. They help children develop focus, emotional regulation, and cooperation, skills essential for success in school and in life.
Investing early is both effective and efficient. It’s much better to build strong foundations than to try to fix problems later. High-quality child care improves children’s health and well-being and generates long-term public savings by reducing future spending on special education, healthcare, child protection, and the criminal justice system. These earliest years aren’t just preparation for school — they’re preparation for life.
FOR FAMILIES AND THE ECONOMY: Parents, Work, and Infrastructure
Child care is a cornerstone of New Jersey’s economy. Today, three-quarters of children under age six in the state have all available parents in the workforce. And that number is rising: from 67% in 2017 to 70% in 2022 and 75% in 2024.
Child care enables parents to work, supports business productivity, and fuels broad economic growth. But for thousands of working parents in New Jersey, finding and paying for high-quality child care is a puzzle without a solution. For most, child care is the single largest household expense — outpacing rent, car payments, or in-state college tuition. And many families struggle to find care at all. Statewide, licensed child care capacity falls well short of potential need, with especially acute shortages for infants and toddlers. Licensed child care centers have the capacity to serve only about 27% of New Jersey’s youngest children, contributing to an overall 18% gap between child care capacity and potential need across ages. These barriers influence decisions about work, family finances, and career advancement.
For many families, the cost of child care far exceeds what is considered affordable. Roughly half of New Jersey families pay more than 7% of their yearly income on care, well above the federal affordability benchmark. Tuition costs, on average, $20,213 a year for one infant in a licensed center in New Jersey, according to Child Care Aware of America. That means a family at New Jersey’s median family income of $126,827 spends 16% of its income on care — and that’s if there’s only one child. For families with two young children, child care costs can consume 30% or more of household income, forcing trade-offs that undermine financial stability and workforce participation.
The public recognizes the scope of the problem. A recent Rutgers–Eagleton poll (see Appendix C for the full poll results) found that
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Nearly seven in 10 New Jersey voters say it’s difficult to find affordable, high-quality child care.
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Six in 10 believe the lack of affordable options keeps parents out of the workforce.
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Seven in 10 say the shortage of child care directly harms New Jersey’s economy.
To help reduce costs…for families who work, are in school or job training, or a combination of activities. But CCAP is available to too few families because eligibility for new enrollees cuts off at an income of $66,000 for a family of 4 in 2026 – far below what it costs to live and work in New Jersey. So, many families have an income above what qualifies for a subsidy but too low to afford high-quality care.
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They deal with the child care crisis by relying on relatives, friends, or neighbors. For some, especially in Black and Hispanic communities, care from relatives reflects trusted, culturally rooted relationships. But when families rely on relatives because they can’t afford or find other options, it signals a deeper problem: Too many families lack real choice.
The National Institute for Early Education Research found in 2025
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Families making less than $50,000 a year are far less likely to use center-based programs and more likely to rely on relatives.
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Black and Hispanic families are more likely to depend on relative care and less likely to use center-based programs compared to white families.
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More than a quarter of Black families — 26% — report being unable to find child care when they need it.
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Center-based participation is lowest in central and southern New Jersey, revealing persistent regional gaps.
True family choice would mean every parent has a full range of high-quality options: center-based, family child care, or relative care — all supported by stable funding, strong quality standards, and an equitably compensated workforce.
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Reliable child care reduces absenteeism, improves employee retention, and increases family income, making it possible for more parents, especially women, to fully participate in the workforce. Yet across industries, employers struggle to fill open positions while many communities lack sufficient licensed child care to support a growing workforce.
When families can’t find or afford care, parents might be forced to reduce hours or leave jobs altogether. The result is lost wages and financial insecurity for families, reduced productivity for businesses, and lower state tax revenue to fund public services.
By making work possible, child care functions as essential economic infrastructure — just like roads, schools, and utilities. It supports every other part of the economy. When child care is unstable or inaccessible, the economy feels the strain. Parents and employers learned this the hard way during the COVID-19 pandemic. New Jersey’s child care sector never fully recovered from that shock, and core problems remain unaddressed.
New Jersey’s child care sector itself generates $4.1 billion a year in economic activity and supports about 67,000 full-time jobs. But the state still faces a significant shortage of available care, particularly for infants and toddlers. The cost of this shortage isn’t abstract. It’s estimated that New Jersey’s child care crisis costs the state’s economy $5 billion a year a year in lost wages, tax revenue, and business productivity — on top of the everyday stress families experience.
New Jersey isn’t alone in confronting these challenges, but it’s falling behind other states in addressing them. Across the country, a growing number of states — red, blue, and purple — are establishing dedicated revenue sources for child care, driven in part by business leaders concerned about workforce recruitment and retention. As a pharmacy owner in Missouri told The Washington Post in a December 2025 article, “A lack of child care impacts every aspect of the economy. Think of how many people want to work and can’t because they can’t afford child care.” States’ actions reflect growing recognition that child care is no longer a private concern, but a core economic issue requiring public solutions.
6 OUT OF 10
NJ voters believe the lack of affordable child care options keeps parents out of the workforce
73%
gap between infant and toddler child care capacity and estimated need in New Jersey
>26%
of Black families report being unable to find child care when they need it
7 OUT OF 10
New Jersey voters say the shortage of child care directly harms New Jersey’s economy
30%
share of household income consumed by child care costs for families with two young children
$5 BILLION
Amount New Jersey forfeits each year in lost wages, tax revenue, and business productivity
67,000
Number of full-time jobs supported by New Jersey’s child care sector
~50%
of New Jersey families pay more than 7% of their yearly income on child care
+ NEW JERSEY LAGS IN SUBSIDY SUPPORT
A New Jersey family of four, with two parents working full-time at minimum wage and two young children, pays more than half its annual income on child care — leaving too little to cover housing, food, transportation, and other basic needs. The state’s Child Care Assistance Program restricts eligibility for child care subsidies to families earning no more than double the federal poverty level, a limit of $66,000 for a family of four in 2026. States are allowed to use federal funds to provide subsidies to families above that level — up to 85% of the Area Median Income ($134,671 for a family of four in 2025). But New Jersey’s income eligibility cutoff for subsidies is less than half that — just 41% of the Area Median Income — among the lowest in the nation.
+ Why is child care so expensive if the people providing it are paid so little?
Economists describe child care as an example of “market failure” because it costs more to provide than most families can afford to pay. With the cost of child care mostly borne by individual families, the private market, on its own, could never provide enough affordable, high-quality care to meet the needs of all New Jersey families.
Child care is labor-intensive, by necessity: Programs need enough well-trained staff to provide sufficient attention, care, and nurturing for young children — especially infants and toddlers. The work can’t be outsourced, automated, or done by artificial intelligence.
Fixed costs are high: Child care providers must pay for facilities that meet stringent standards, licensing and compliance costs, insurance, food, utilities, diapers, and more. These are crucial for children’s health and safety, and they are expensive.
The result: The only way to keep prices within reach for families is to pay low wages and offer limited benefits for educators—locking the system into a cycle that is neither affordable nor sustainable.
FOR THE CHILD CARE WORKFORCE: Educators as the Backbone of the System
Early childhood educators support children during the most critical period of development and make it possible for parents to participate in the workforce. Yet they are among the lowest-paid workers in New Jersey. The median wage for a full-time early childhood educator was just $37,114 in 2023 — far below the statewide median of $54,859 — leaving many educators unable to meet basic needs.
As a result, New Jersey’s child care educators are more than twice as likely as other workers to live in poverty. Nearly 40% of infant-toddler educators earn so little they qualify for such public benefits as Medicaid or SNAP, and half regularly struggle to pay for such essentials as housing, food, medical care, and utilities.
Low wages, inadequate benefits, and chronic financial stress drive high turnover among early childhood educators, limiting the supply of care and undermining programs’ stability and quality. This instability makes it harder for families to find reliable care and harder for providers to keep their doors open. Nearly one in four child care lead teachers in New Jersey reported looking for a new or additional job in the past three months. The most common reason for their job search was to find a job that pays more.
For too long, the workforce has been treated as an afterthought rather than the foundation of the child care system. But educators aren’t just one component of child care. They are the system. Without a stable, well-compensated child care workforce, no investment in access or quality can succeed. Supporting early childhood educators is not simply a moral imperative — it’s an economic one.
WHAT NEW JERSEY NEEDS TO DO
Three Guiding Principles
Many states, including New Jersey, have taken important steps to modernize their child care systems, including increasing subsidy rates, providing one-time compensation support for educators, investing in facilities, and piloting new funding approaches. These actions demonstrate that meaningful reform is possible and politically viable. But one-time investments aren’t sufficient; lasting impact requires sustained, predictable public funding that treats child care as essential infrastructure.
New Jersey’s child care crisis is not the result of a single failure. Nor can it be solved with isolated fixes. It reflects a system designed for a different era — one that no longer aligns with how families live, how the economy functions, or what children need to thrive. Addressing this challenge requires a clear, durable framework to guide decision-making, investment, and policy.
To build a child care system that works for families, educators, employers, and the broad economy, New Jersey must ground its approach in three guiding principles.
Child care must be affordable and accessible for every family that needs it.
Families can’t participate fully in the workforce or plan for their future when the cost of care rivals housing or higher education or when care is unavailable where and when it’s needed. In a functional system, all families could obtain high-quality care without sacrificing financial stability or being forced into impossible choices — whatever their income, wherever they live in New Jersey, and regardless of their work schedules.
Early childhood educators must be compensated and supported as the professionals they are.
The stability and quality of child care depend entirely on the workforce. Educators who nurture children during the most critical years of development must be paid at a level that reflects their skill, responsibility, and value to society. Without professional-level compensation, benefits, and career pathways, the system will continue to experience high turnover, inadequate supply, and uneven quality.
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Child care must be recognized as essential economic infrastructure and funded accordingly.
Child care isn’t a private convenience or, for thousands of families, optional support. It’s a prerequisite for a functioning economy. Like schools, transportation, and utilities, it requires sustained public investment, coordinated governance, and long-term planning. Treating child care as infrastructure acknowledges its role in enabling work, supporting business growth, and strengthening New Jersey’s economic competitiveness.
These principles are interconnected. Progress in one area can’t be sustained without progress in the others. Together, they provide the foundation for the policy recommendations that follow — and for a child care system designed to meet the realities of family life and economic participation in the 21st century.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
The following recommendations translate the guiding principles of the Start Strong NJ Blueprint into state policy. Each recommendation would help strengthen New Jersey’s child care system by making child care affordable and available for families; building a stable, well-compensated early childhood workforce; and boosting the state’s economic infrastructure. These recommendations are mutually reinforcing; progress in one area depends on progress in the others.
Make High-Quality Child Care Affordable and Accessible for Families
CCAP should be a reliable work support for families, not a rationed benefit. New Jersey must fund CCAP at the level needed for all eligible families to receive assistance and prevent enrollment freezes that destabilize both families and providers, such as occurred in summer 2025.
Using state and federal funds, New Jersey’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) helps cover the cost of child care for low-paid families where all parents work or attend school full time. But In August 2025, underfunding in the state budget forced CCAP to stop accepting new applications, pushing working parents into financial crisis and putting child care providers at risk of closing. As of early 2026, CCAP hasn’t fully reopened, leaving children without stable care, parents unable to work, and providers without the enrollment they need to stay open.
Because CCAP serves parents working full time or pursuing career-advancing education, expanding the program would bolster New Jersey’s economy. Raising the income level at which families are eligible for subsidies would stabilize more working families struggling to make ends meet and enable more parents to work.
Despite New Jersey’s high cost of living and high cost of child care, the state’s income cutoff for child care subsidies is among the lowest in the nation — well below what federal program rules allow. This leaves too many hardworking families unable to afford child care, yet unable to qualify for assistance. CCAP should be a lifeline for working families, but underfunding and outdated eligibility rules undercut its potential and purpose. Increasing New Jersey’s income eligibility threshold to triple the federal poverty level (it’s double that level now) would enable an additional 102,287 children from low-paid families in New Jersey to receive child care assistance. Matching New Jersey’s eligibility criteria to the federal rules would bring that total to nearly 200,000 children from working families.
Subsidies, which providers receive as reimbursement from the state, should follow the child, not the setting. Family child care providers should be reimbursed at rates comparable to centers for care of the same age group, reflecting the true cost of quality.
CCAP subsidies go to child care providers as direct payments. Today, family care providers get only about 77% of the center-based reimbursement rate per child, even when serving children of the same age and meeting comparable standards. When family child care providers are reimbursed at lower rates than centers for the same work, it creates inequity and puts additional financial strain on small programs that already serve fewer children.
Copayments increase financial strain on families and create administrative barriers that discourage their participation. Increasing reimbursements to providers by enough to reduce family copays would improve continuity of care and ease financial hardship — especially for lower-paid families.
State CCAP rules require some families receiving subsidies to make copayments to child care providers. The amount is determined by a sliding scale based on household income, family size, and whether children attend a program full time or part time. New Jersey families with incomes below the federal poverty level ($33,000 for a family of four in 2026) have no copayment. Qualifying families with incomes above that amount face a monthly copay of 2% to 7% of their household income — a burden for low-paid families that struggle to make ends meet. In addition to copays, families are required to make up the difference between the state’s monthly subsidy payment to providers and the providers’ actual tuition fees. Many families can’t afford it, which forces providers to decide between losing out on income or removing families from the program.
Families should be able to apply for and maintain child care assistance without facing duplicate paperwork, as many do now. Coordinating eligibility verification for various public benefits would reduce barriers for families and the administrative burden for the state.
Many families receiving such forms of income-based public assistance as SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) and NJ FamilyCare (Medicaid), are also eligible for CCAP. But they must apply separately for each program, often providing the same documents and information each time. This causes difficulty for time-pressed working families and is administratively inefficient for the state.
With their more flexible hours, family child care providers are the only options for many families whose work schedules don’t conform to center-based care and for communities that lack enough child care spaces. Family child care providers should be allowed to serve more children — up to a reasonable cap — based on space, staffing ratios, and quality standards.
For many parents whose jobs aren't nine to five, family child care is the only option. New Jersey's burdensome status quo makes it hard for some family child care providers to keep their doors open. New Jersey should update its regulations to allow family child care (FCC) providers to serve more children — within reasonable limits — while continuing to uphold the state’s child ratios and strong health and safety standards. Modernizing capacity rules would highlight the important role of FCC within communities, increase access for working families and strengthen the business foundation of FCC providers.
New Jersey should implement its recent expansion of job protection so more parents can take leave without fear of losing their position as well as simplify the application and approval process. The state should also strengthen coordination of family leave with other child care support and expand outreach so more residents — particularly lower-wage workers and fathers — are aware of these benefits.
New Jersey was the second state to institute paid family and medical leave for parents. And the state’s recent expansion of job protection for those taking paid leave is encouraging. But administrative complexity and low awareness of the program still keep many eligible families from using paid leave. Taking paid leave benefits after welcoming a child is shown to improve health for children and parents, strengthen families’ economic security, increase workforce participation — particularly among mothers — and help businesses recruit and retain skilled workers. More parents taking paid leave when welcoming a child could mean reduced demand for infant care, the most expensive child care setting.
New Jersey should increase the dollar amount and raise the income eligibility level for two state tax credits: the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. These steps would help more families afford care by reflecting today’s child care prices and cost of living, recognizing the share of families’ budgets that go toward child care, and making more families eligible for credits.
Available to families that pay for care that enables them to work or actively look for work, New Jersey’s Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) helps ease the burden of child care costs. But the dollar amount of the credit and its income eligibility level don’t adequately reflect the cost of care. Though New Jersey families spend an average of $20,213 a year for one infant in a child care, the highest CDCTC amount a family could receive in 2025 was $1,050 — and that’s only for families that have yearly income below $15,000 and multiple children with child care expenses. The credit amount drops as income rises and disappears entirely for families making over $150,000. But with New Jersey’s high cost of living and high child care prices, even moderate- and higher-income families struggle to afford child care and basic necessities. Child care for two young children consumes more than 25% of pretax income for a family making $150,000 — well over the 7% threshold federal guidelines recommend.
Similarly, the state’s Child Tax Credit (CTC), for families with children age five and younger, recognizes that families with young children have higher expenses. But that credit, too, is low and has an income eligibility threshold that excludes most families. Families that qualify can get back up to $1,000 for each dependent child age five or younger and the credit goes down as income rises. Families making $40,000-$50,000 in a year can get only $600 per young child, and those making $60,000-$80,000 just $200. Families with incomes over $80,000 don’t qualify for a credit regardless of how many young children they have or what their expenses are.
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A SYSTEM THAT WORKS
These recommendations aren’t meant to be standalone fixes. Affordability depends on a stable child care workforce. Stability of that workforce depends on sufficient, predictable funding. Adequate funding and coordinated governance require treating child care as essential infrastructure.
Taken together, these recommendations offer a practical, evidence-informed path to a child care system that reflects the realities of family life, strengthens New Jersey’s economy, and provides every child the opportunity to start strong, no matter where in New Jersey they live or their families’ income.
New Jersey’s child care challenges aren’t the result of individual family choices or provider shortcomings. They’re the predictable outcome of a system built for a different economy and a different era. Today, child care is essential infrastructure that makes work possible, supports healthy child development, and sustains the state’s economic competitiveness. But the current system makes families shoulder costs they can’t afford and calls upon educators to sustain a critical industry on wages too low to reflect the value of their work. That’s not a sustainable model for families, for businesses, or for the state.
New Jersey has the opportunity to build something better: a child care system grounded in stable investment in child care as a public good, with fair and predictable funding; strong accountability; and real family choice among centers, family child care, and trusted relative care. It must function as a connected system from birth through the early learning years, building the foundation for success in kindergarten, school, and life. It should be affordable and easy for families to navigate. Child care providers should be able to rely on predictable payments. When child care is stable, families are more secure, employers are more competitive, and communities are stronger.
The question isn’t whether New Jersey can afford to invest in child care. The question is whether New Jersey can afford not to. Every year we delay, families are pushed out of the workforce, providers close their doors, and the state loses economic ground. The path forward is clear: Treat child care as the essential infrastructure it has become and fund it accordingly. New Jersey’s future workforce is being cared for and shaped every day in child care centers, family child care homes, and by trusted family, friend, and neighbor caregivers. Decisions we make now will determine whether families, businesses, and communities can thrive for generations to come. Because when child care works, New Jersey works.
