As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Maryland has one city among the largest 250 in the nation.
Maryland passed its Family and Medical Leave Insurance program in 2022 — twelve weeks at 90% wage replacement, one of the most generous statutes in the country. New parents in Bethesda and Baltimore will not see a dollar of it until July 2028. The legislation has been delayed twice, most recently in the 2025 session, leaving the Free State with a paid-leave benefit on paper and federal FMLA in practice. The gap between what Maryland's policy profile measures and what Maryland's families experience is the central tension in the data below. The state's $101,652 median household income — third-highest in the country — masks an Annapolis-Bethesda corridor paying $26,000-plus for an infant slot and a Baltimore that runs at half that household income against Mid-Atlantic prices. The headline 20.4% cost-of-childcare ratio is a state-aggregate fiction.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- Moderate (56/100), 19th nationally; lifted by the country's third-highest median household income but dragged by Baltimore's affordability inversion.
- Paid family leave program legislated 2022 at 90% wage replacement, but delayed twice — first benefit checks now July 2028.
- Center infant care: $20,729 a year, 20.4% of median income; Montgomery County runs $26,000-$32,000, Baltimore at half the household income.
Affordability — 62/100
Affordability scores 62.1 — modestly above the national norm despite the state carrying some of the country's highest absolute childcare prices. Center infant care averages $20,729 a year (NDCP, forward-projected to 2025), 20.4% of the state's $101,652 median household income. National figures sit at $17,163 and 21.9%. Toddler and preschool care both run $14,518; family child care comes in lower at $14,960 for infants.
Median rent of $1,662 a month produces a 1.04 childcare-to-rent ratio — childcare and shelter cost roughly the same per month for a typical family. The picture flatters the state in headline terms because Maryland's high median household income offsets the high absolute prices. The lived experience differs sharply by region. Montgomery County and Howard County carry the state's most expensive infant prices — $26,000-$32,000 a year is normal in the better-credentialed centers serving the federal corridor and the Johns Hopkins-Bethesda biomedical belt. Baltimore City and Baltimore County run materially lower in absolute prices but also at materially lower household incomes, producing affordability ratios that look worse than the state aggregate. The Eastern Shore and Western Maryland run lower-still in both prices and incomes.
The Maryland affordability picture is therefore a story of two demographic profiles overlapping at the state-aggregate level: high-income, high-cost metro corridors that absorb expensive prices comfortably, and lower-income working-class metros where the state's high absolute prices land hard. The headline 20.4% figure understates the burden in Baltimore City and Cecil County and overstates it in Bethesda and Columbia.
Supply — 29/100
Supply scores 29.4 — well below the national norm and a meaningful drag on the overall position. Maryland runs 1,339 licensed establishments at 3.73 per 1,000 kids under 5, below the 4.21 national figure. The 255,490 licensed slots cover demand at a 16.2% Bipartisan Policy Center supply gap, well below the 27.0% national gap.
The supply geography divides cleanly between the federal corridor and the rest of the state. Montgomery County, Howard County, and Anne Arundel County maintain reasonably dense provider networks anchored by both center chains and Spanish-, Mandarin-, and Korean-bilingual family-child-care homes serving the federal contractor and biomedical professional community. Baltimore City and Baltimore County run thinner per-capita than the federal corridor — Baltimore's east-side neighborhoods report infant-room waitlists of 8-12 months at the credentialed centers and recent provider closures since the 2023 stabilization-funding expiration. The Eastern Shore and Western Maryland operate as functional childcare deserts across most of the rural counties.
The state's licensing pipeline has not produced new establishments at the pace the federal-corridor child population requires. Maryland's recent provider losses since the 2023 federal cliff have hit Baltimore City hardest, even as the Montgomery County corridor continues to absorb new high-end center capacity.
Workforce — 70/100
Workforce Health scores 69.6 — Maryland's strongest dimension, lifted by the state's relatively higher absolute childcare wages. The median Maryland childcare worker earns $16.90 an hour, $35,150 a year for full-time work, against a $25.94 single-adult living wage. Wages cover 65.2% of basic costs — almost three points above the 62.6% national figure and one of the higher ratios in the South Atlantic.
State employment in the occupation totals 8,910. The Maryland childcare wage premium reflects a combination of factors: the state's higher overall wage floor, federal contractor competition for the same labor pool that drives center wages up, and the structural cost-of-living pressure that requires center wages to clear a higher floor for retention. A lead teacher at a Bethesda or Columbia center earning $35,000-$42,000 a year covers basic single-adult costs comfortably and a small household with effort. A Baltimore City lead teacher at the same wage band carries a different cost-of-living calculus, with city housing and transportation costs producing a tighter ratio.
The workforce score is meaningfully better than the southern norm, but the state's high absolute prices and tight supply mean that even relatively well-paid workers cannot solve the system's structural imbalances on their own.
Family Strain — 65/100
Family Strain scores 64.7 — Maryland's second-strongest dimension and one of the higher figures in the country. Mothers' labor force participation for kids under 6 sits at 73.6%, more than five points above the 68.2% national average. The single-parent share is 31.9%, almost exactly at the national 31.8%.
The high mothers' LFP figure reads as both opportunity and necessity. Maryland's federal-corridor labor market expects dual-earner households at scale, and the cost of housing in Montgomery County, Howard County, and Anne Arundel County essentially requires them. The state's relatively low single-parent share also reflects the federal-employment demographic that has anchored the I-95 corridor for decades, supporting a comparatively married-couple-heavy family-structure profile. The strain is concentrated in Baltimore City and the Eastern Shore counties, where single-parent shares run materially higher than the state aggregate.
Policy Support — 66/100
Policy Support scores 66.3 — set at the state level and inherited by every Maryland city. State pre-K reaches 38% of 4-year-olds and 7% of 3-year-olds, with per-pupil spending of $10,977 — among the higher per-child investment levels in the country. NIEER quality benchmarks met: 8 of 10. Maryland's pre-K program has expanded under the Blueprint for Maryland's Future legislation passed in 2021, with structural growth in seat counts continuing through 2027.
CCDF subsidies reach 18.2% of eligible children monthly — about 25,800 children — below the national norm. The state's CCDF infrastructure has been less aggressive than its pre-K expansion and lags neighboring DC and Virginia on per-eligible-family reach. Head Start enrolls about 8,992, with another 2,254 in Early Head Start.
The most important caveat in Maryland's policy profile is the paid family leave program. Maryland passed Family and Medical Leave Insurance in 2022, providing 12 weeks of leave at 90% wage replacement. The program will not begin paying benefits until July 2028. The legislation has been delayed twice — most recently in the 2025 session — leaving most Maryland parents without state paid leave for the report period and through at least the 2027-28 fiscal year. The policy score includes credit for the legislated program; the lived experience for new parents in 2026 does not yet include the benefit.
City spotlight
Baltimore is the only Maryland city in the index's 250-city cohort, scoring 47 (Strained) and ranked 151 of 250 nationally. The city's profile inverts the state aggregate in several dimensions. Baltimore's affordability score (10.9) is among the country's lowest — the city's median household income is materially below the state aggregate even as Baltimore-area infant-care prices remain in line with the broader Mid-Atlantic market — producing a brutal household-budget ratio that the state-level affordability number does not capture.
Baltimore's workforce dimension (81.7) runs materially better than the state aggregate, lifted by the city's relatively higher childcare wages relative to the local cost-of-living floor. The city's supply dimension (62.5) also runs better than the state aggregate, anchored by an established network of city center chains and faith-based providers. The Baltimore profile is the inverse of Arlington's across the river: weak affordability paired with strong supply and workforce, where Arlington pairs catastrophic affordability with catastrophic-good supply and family strain.
The remainder of Maryland's childcare story plays out in cities outside the index's 250-city cohort — Frederick, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Bowie, Hagerstown, Salisbury, Annapolis. Their absence from the cohort is a feature of Maryland's geography: most of the state's population lives in unincorporated Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel, and Prince George's county jurisdictions, not in legally distinct cities. The federal-corridor childcare market — by far the largest and most expensive in the state — therefore appears in this report at the state aggregate level rather than the city level.
In-home care in Maryland
The Montgomery County and Howard County professional in-home care market is one of the densest in the country, integrated with the broader DC-Metro market across the river. Career nannies in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac, Columbia, and Ellicott City command $25-$40 an hour, with the upper end concentrated among federal contractor, biomedical, and lobby-firm households. The market supports an unusual depth of bilingual nannies — Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, French, Amharic — driven by both the immigrant labor supply and the federal-and-NGO demand profile. The Silver Spring and Wheaton family-child-care community serves as a structural feeder into the formal nanny market for many career professionals.
Nanny shares are a structural feature of the federal-corridor two-child-household market. Two-family arrangements at $30-$36 per family are the dominant solution among DC-Metro federal professionals in the Maryland suburbs, with the per-child price routinely competitive with or below the equivalent center slot. The au pair market in Montgomery County and Howard County is among the largest in the country, anchored by the international biomedical and federal contractor community. The combination of formal nannies, nanny shares, and au pairs makes the Maryland federal corridor one of the few US markets where in-home care has scaled into a structural substitute for center-based infant capacity rather than a luxury supplement.
The Baltimore market supports a separate in-home care economy, with career nanny rates in Roland Park, Mount Washington, and the city's North Charles Street corridor running $20-$28 an hour — meaningfully lower than the Montgomery County market and anchored by the Hopkins biomedical and university community. The Eastern Shore and Western Maryland support small professional nanny markets, often seasonal in the resort communities (Ocean City, Deep Creek Lake) and otherwise informal.
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). State-level Policy Support is inherited by all cities in the state. 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; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (May 2024) and QCEW; Bipartisan Policy Center childcaregap.org (Sept 2025); NIEER State of Preschool Yearbook 2024; HHS ACF CCDF FY2023; National Partnership for Women & Families (March 2026).