As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Colorado Springs ranks the 39th largest city in the nation.
Colorado Springs sits at the intersection of two specialized labor markets — five military installations anchored by Fort Carson and Peterson Space Force Base, and a growing aerospace and defense-tech sector — and the local childcare economy reflects both. Center-based infant care runs about $22,000 a year, the Colorado state-average price (the federal NDCP does not publish El Paso County rates), and consumes 27% of the city's $83,198 median household income. Provider wages rank in the top 5% nationally on the wage-to-living-wage ratio, but mothers' labor-force participation runs four points below national, a function of dual-deployment cycles and frequent moves. Colorado Springs ranks 149th of 250 — seventh of nine Colorado cities.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- 149th nationally, score 48 (Strained) — seventh of nine Colorado cities, ahead only of Aurora and Greeley.
- Infant care eats 27% of household income — Colorado's second-heaviest burden after Greeley, on state-average pricing.
- Provider wages rank near the top nationally; mothers' work participation runs four points below national, reflecting the city's military-family demographic.
Actionable takeaways
- Watch the data caveat. The federal price database does not publish El Paso County rates, so the $22,000 figure is anchored to Colorado's statewide average. Expect on-base CDC fee schedules and off-base private rates to bracket that number rather than match it.
- Frame coverage around dual-deployment cycles. The four-point LFP gap below national almost certainly reflects PCS moves and deployment timing, not local labor-market choice. Stories about "moms opting out" miss the structural mechanic — interview military-family service organizations, not just civilian centers.
- Workforce is the bright spot. El Paso County's 74% wage-to-living-wage ratio is the strongest in Colorado, so center directors here can talk credibly about retention even as families struggle on price. That contrast is the local angle.
Affordability — 23/100
Center-based infant care in Colorado Springs runs about $22,000 a year — roughly $1,840 a month, or 27% of the city's $83,198 median household income. That price comes from statewide-average pricing data: the U.S. Department of Labor's National Database of Childcare Prices does not publish county-level rates for El Paso County, so the figure anchors to Child Care Aware of America's 2024 Colorado survey forward-projected to 2025. The burden is steep relative to local wages. A Colorado Springs family spends roughly $4,860 more per year on an infant center slot than the national median, and infant care now exceeds median monthly rent by 18%. For households at the city median — many of them military or contractor families with predictable but not generous income — that math forces hard tradeoffs around enrollment timing, hours, and which parent steps back.
Supply — 37/100
Colorado Springs has roughly 40 licensed slots for every 100 kids under five with working parents — short of the desert threshold but well below the national 73-per-100 mark. El Paso County licenses about 140 establishments serving an estimated 22,800 slots against demand from roughly 57,000 kids. Establishment density runs at about 3.0 per 1,000 kids under five, slightly thinner than Denver and the state average of 3.4. Statewide, the Bipartisan Policy Center pegs the Colorado gap at 37%. Colorado Springs sits squarely in the middle of that pattern: not a crisis on the desert metric, but enough of a shortage that finding a slot near base, near work, or near home almost always means waitlisting at multiple providers.
Workforce — 98/100
The median Colorado Springs childcare worker earns $17.83 an hour, or about $37,090 a year — one of the strongest workforce-health scores in the entire 250-city index. That same wage equals 74% of MIT's living-wage threshold for El Paso County ($24.13/hr), the highest wage-to-living-wage ratio of any Colorado city. Workers here are still short of self-sufficiency, but by less than in Denver, Aurora, or Boise. The lower local cost of living, paired with respectable nominal wages, makes Colorado Springs one of the few metros where a childcare career is closer to viable — though "closer" still leaves a 26-point gap.
Family strain — 49/100
About 64% of Colorado Springs mothers with kids under six are in the labor force — below the national 68% and the state 68%. The lower participation rate likely reflects the city's military-family demographic, where dual deployment schedules and frequent moves push more households toward a single-earner pattern at any given moment. Roughly 29% of families with kids under 18 are headed by a single parent, slightly under the national 32%. The strain dimension scores in the bottom half because local mothers' work participation has not caught up to the rest of the state — a structural feature of military life as much as a childcare-access signal.
Policy support — 65/100
Colorado's universal pre-K reaches about 70% of four-year-olds, with state per-child spending at $5,722 and 2 of NIEER's 10 quality benchmarks met. The state's FAMLI paid leave program, effective January 2024, offers up to 12 weeks at up to 90% wage replacement. CCDF subsidy reach in Colorado is 12.7% — leaving most income-eligible families without help. Policy is measured at the state level; Colorado Springs inherits the same mix as the rest of Colorado: generous on leave, narrow on subsidies, middling on pre-K intensity.
In-home care in Colorado Springs
In-home care in Colorado Springs tracks broader Front Range nanny-market patterns, with full-time live-out rates in line with the wider Colorado market. The city's military families are a distinctive segment of the local in-home market: predictable PCS cycles, deployment-driven need spikes, and on-base eligibility for fee-assisted Child Development Centers shape demand patterns differently than in Denver or Boulder. Au pair placements remain a small but steady channel for households needing schedule flexibility.
Methodology: The the score is a 0-100 composite score across five dimensions: Affordability (30 pts), Supply (25 pts), Workforce Health (15 pts), Family Strain (15 pts), and Policy Support (15 pts). City-level prices and supply use the city's primary containing county. Policy Support is measured at the state level. Full methodology and data sources: beverly.io/research/methodology.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019-2023 5-year estimates; U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices; Child Care Aware of America 2024 state survey (Colorado pricing anchor); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (May 2024) and QCEW; Buffett Early Childhood Institute / Bipartisan Policy Center / Child Care Aware childcaregap.org (Sept 2025); NIEER State of Preschool Yearbook 2024; HHS ACF CCDF FY2023; National Partnership for Women & Families (March 2026).