As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, North Carolina has 9 cities among the largest 250 in the nation.
North Carolina's licensed childcare slots cover 44% of estimated demand. The remaining 55.9% is a gap — the largest in the country — and it is concentrated in exactly the metros absorbing the state's net in-migration. Wake County waitlists for infant rooms now run twelve to eighteen months at credentialed centers; Mecklenburg County is reporting both rising waitlists and rising provider closures. Charlotte and Raleigh, the engines of the state's Sun Belt growth story, both rank in the bottom 25 American cities on the index, alongside a Charlotte satellite. The story underneath is economic geography. North Carolina's child population has outgrown its provider workforce, the licensing pipeline has not caught up, and the housing-cost wave that pushed Atlanta and Nashville prices into the national band has done the same to the Triangle and the Queen City — without the slot supply to absorb the demand.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- Strained (49/100), 28th nationally; Sun Belt growth state where supply has not kept up with the under-5 population.
- 55.9% supply gap — the country's worst — with licensed slots covering just 44% of estimated demand.
- Charlotte (36) and Raleigh (36) both rank in the country's bottom 25 cities; Wake County infant waitlists run 12-18 months.
Affordability — 67/100
Affordability scores 66.7 — North Carolina's strongest dimension and above the national norm. Center infant care averages $12,989 a year (NDCP, forward-projected to 2025), 18.6% of the state's $69,904 median household income. National figures sit at $17,163 and 21.9%. Toddler care comes in at $11,190, preschool at $8,925, and family child care at $10,238 for infants.
Median rent of $1,162 a month produces a 0.93 childcare-to-rent ratio — close to parity, with childcare and shelter costing roughly the same per month for a typical family. The picture flatters the state outside the urban Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham metros. Inside Mecklenburg and Wake counties, infant prices in the better-credentialed centers now run $16,000-$22,000 a year, and the typical Charlotte family with one infant can spend close to a quarter of household income on childcare even though the statewide figure stays in the high teens. The Triad (Greensboro-Winston-Salem) runs near the state median; the eastern coastal plain runs materially below.
The North Carolina affordability cushion is real for families outside the urban core and increasingly strained inside it. The state's housing-cost trajectory in Charlotte and the Triangle has tracked Atlanta and Nashville more than the southern small-city pattern, and childcare prices have moved with the housing wave. A Greensboro family with one infant in center care spends roughly $5,000 less per year than a Charlotte counterpart at the same household income.
Supply — 55/100
Supply scores 54.9 — modestly above the national norm on the index's percentile-rank scale, which rewards states with relatively dense provider networks even when the absolute slot count lags demand. North Carolina runs 2,661 licensed establishments at 4.45 per 1,000 kids under 5, modestly above the 4.21 national figure. The state's 197,080 licensed slots cover demand at a 55.9% Bipartisan Policy Center supply gap — more than double the 27.0% national gap and the country's most acute headline shortage.
The math: North Carolina's licensed-slot count covers roughly 44% of the BPC demand baseline of 461,350 children. The shortfall is concentrated in the high-growth metros — Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Wilmington — that have absorbed most of the state's net in-migration since 2020. Wake County's infant-room waitlists routinely run 12-18 months at the credentialed centers, and Mecklenburg County reports both rising waitlists and rising provider closures since the 2023 stabilization-funding expiration. The eastern coastal plain runs comparatively better but still below national density.
The structural pressure is unambiguous: the state's child population has grown faster than its provider workforce can scale, and the licensing pipeline has not produced new establishments at the pace the BPC demand baseline implies the state needs. The supply score is held above national norm only by reasonable provider density per 1,000 kids — the count of slots per child is among the worst in the country.
Workforce — 33/100
Workforce Health scores 33.3 — well below the national norm and a meaningful drag on the overall position. The median North Carolina childcare worker earns $13.69 an hour, $28,480 a year for full-time work, against a $22.47 single-adult living wage. Wages cover 60.9% of basic costs, modestly below the 62.6% national figure.
State employment in the occupation totals 12,200. The structural pressure is the same Tennessee faces but at larger scale: housing costs in Mecklenburg and Wake counties have outpaced childcare wages enough that the metro workforce now commutes from Gastonia, Concord, Knightdale, and Garner — adding 60-90 minutes daily to a job paying near the survival edge. A lead teacher at a Charlotte center earning $28,000-$31,000 a year cannot rent a one-bedroom in the same school district as the families she serves, and the in-migration of higher-income households has accelerated the wage-to-housing decoupling.
The Triad and the eastern coastal plain run materially better workforce ratios — Greensboro and Winston-Salem center wages cover closer to 65% of the local living wage — but the state aggregate is dragged down by the metro pressure.
Family Strain — 35/100
Family Strain scores 35.3. Mothers' labor force participation for kids under 6 is 67.5%, almost exactly at the 68.2% national average. The single-parent share is 33.1%, modestly above the national 31.8%.
The high mothers' LFP figure reads as a sign of necessity in metro Charlotte and the Triangle, where two-earner households are the structural norm for housing-cost reasons, and as a sign of stable opportunity in the Triad and the smaller western North Carolina cities. The 33% single-parent share is concentrated in the urban cores and the eastern Black Belt counties, where the strain compounds with thinner CCDF reach.
Policy Support — 34/100
Policy Support scores 34.0 — North Carolina's weakest dimension and the central reason the state lands in the index's bottom-half tier despite reasonable affordability and supply density. State pre-K reaches 22% of 4-year-olds (zero 3-year-olds), with per-pupil spending of $7,117 — moderate reach at reasonable depth. NIEER quality benchmarks met: 9 of 10 — the program quality is high where it operates.
CCDF subsidies reach 13.4% of eligible children monthly — about 39,400 children — well below the national norm. North Carolina's CCDF infrastructure has not scaled to match the state's growing under-5 population, and the post-2023 contraction has been steeper here than in most southern states. Head Start enrolls about 18,677, with another 4,920 in Early Head Start. There is no paid family leave program.
The state's policy posture combines decent pre-K quality at limited reach, thin CCDF subsidy infrastructure, and no PFL. The Raleigh business community has begun pushing for expanded subsidy reach in recent legislative sessions, but no proposal has cleared serious consideration in Raleigh.
City spotlight
Wilmington leads North Carolina's State of Childcare cohort at score 47 (Strained), ranked 158 of 250 US cities. The New Hanover County labor market — anchored by the medical district, the port, and a steady second-home tourist economy — sustains stronger workforce metrics than the state aggregate, and the metro's affordability holds up despite slowly rising coastal housing costs.
Winston-Salem at score 45 (Strained, ranked 173) and High Point at 44 (Strained, ranked 176) anchor the Triad's middle. Winston-Salem's workforce score (81.3) runs materially better than the state aggregate, lifted by the Forsyth County medical and university base. Greensboro and Durham both score 42 (Strained, ranked 199 and 200). Durham's affordability runs materially worse than Greensboro's, with Duke and the research-triangle workforce inflating local infant-care prices.
Charlotte anchors the bottom at score 36 (Strained), ranked 231 — one of only a handful of major American cities scoring below 40. Raleigh sits two ranks lower at 36 (ranked 233), and Concord at 39 (ranked 211) rounds out the cohort's bottom band. The pattern is unambiguous: North Carolina's two largest metros and a Charlotte satellite city all fall into the country's bottom 25, anchored by the state's acute supply gap and the housing-cost pressure that has compressed workforce affordability across the I-85 belt.
The split between Wilmington (47) and Charlotte (36) is the central North Carolina story: an 11-point gap between a coastal city with a stable economy and a Sun Belt growth metro that the index flags as systematically underbuilt for its growing child population.
In-home care in North Carolina
The professional in-home nanny market in North Carolina is concentrated in three corridors: Charlotte's SouthPark, Myers Park, and Ballantyne neighborhoods; Raleigh-Durham's North Hills, Cary, and Chapel Hill axis; and the Greensboro-Winston-Salem Triad. Career nanny rates in the Charlotte and Triangle markets typically run $20-$30 an hour, with the upper end clustered among bank-executive and medical households in Charlotte's south end and Duke and SAS engineer households in the Triangle. The Triad runs $16-$22 an hour, anchored by the medical district and the regional corporate community.
Nanny shares are an emerging structural feature in both Charlotte and the Triangle, with two-family arrangements at $22-$28 per family becoming a recognized norm in Myers Park, Dilworth, North Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. The financial logic is the same as in larger metros: a $26-an-hour shared nanny covering two infants costs each family about $13 an hour, well below the per-child price of two center slots in the affluent Charlotte and Triangle ZIP codes. Au pair placements are concentrated in SouthPark, Cary, and Chapel Hill, particularly among households with international banking, technology, or medical ties — the program's bilingual angle adds value beyond the cost savings for the metro's growing international workforce.
The North Carolina coastal markets — Wilmington, the Outer Banks, and the Asheville mountain corridor — support seasonal nanny markets that swing with second-home and tourist demand. Career nanny rates in those markets compress in the off-season, creating an unusual labor pattern that many career nannies navigate by combining year-round families with summer placements.
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).