As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Plano ranks the 72nd largest city in the nation.

A Plano family at the local median earns $108,649 a year and pays $13,139 for infant center care — the same Collin County tuition a Dallas family across the county line would pay. The difference is income, not price: a Dallas household at $67,760 spends 19.3% of pre-tax pay on infant tuition, a Plano household 12.1%. The corporate-relocation roster — Toyota North America, JPMorgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, Capital One — pulled tens of thousands of professionals into Collin County in the 2010s and 2020s, and center capacity followed them. Plano scores 69 on Beverly's the score, eighth nationally and Strong tier. Workforce wages tell a different story; the median childcare worker earns $14.31 an hour against a $24.14 living wage.

Key highlights & actionable takeaways

Eighth nationally, score 69 (Strong) — Collin County corporate-relocation suburb behind Frisco and McKinney.
Infant care: 12.1% of income vs. 19.3% across the county line in Dallas; same $13,139 tuition, $108,649 vs. $67,760 income.
Workforce score 33: median childcare wage $14.31/hour against a $24.14 single-adult living wage — 59 cents on the dollar.

Actionable takeaways

Plano completes the Collin County trio. With Frisco (#3) and McKinney (#2), Plano (#8) shows the corporate-relocation suburb pattern is durable across three adjacent cities — same Collin County tuition, same Toyota/JPMorgan/Liberty Mutual employer base, same 12.1% cost burden cluster.
The 62.5% mothers' labor-force rate is the surprise. Plano sits below the national 68.2% rate even with high incomes, suggesting a meaningful share of professional mothers opt out while kids are young — a different dynamic than Frisco/McKinney and worth interviewing local pediatricians and HR leads about.
Tuition is identical across the county line; affluence isn't. Reporters can frame Plano vs. Dallas as the cleanest in-state experiment on what household income — not childcare price — does to the burden number.

Affordability — 98/100

A year of full-time infant center care in Collin County runs $13,139 — about $5,800 cheaper than the national average and broadly in line with Dallas County prices. But where a Dallas family at the city median spends 19.3% of pre-tax income on infant tuition, a Plano family spends 12.1%. The difference is income, not price: $108,649 in Plano against $67,760 in Dallas.

Toddler care runs $12,024; preschool, $11,102; family child care infant care, $11,442. Childcare-to-rent runs 0.61 — well below 1.0 — meaning rent ($1,792/month) easily exceeds tuition. A Plano family with one infant in center care spends roughly $1,200 more per year than the Texas state median for the same care band, but the share of income devoted to childcare is roughly half the national average. The Affordability score of 97.7/100 is the highest in the Texas cluster.

The Frisco-McKinney-Plano corridor of Collin County has become Texas's clearest example of what a high-income suburban concentration does to childcare affordability — same dollar prices, dramatically different burden.

Supply — 76/100

Collin County's licensed slot estimate works out to about 56 slots per 100 children with working parents — the same Texas-wide ratio that holds for most of the state. Plano itself shows 286 licensed establishments, or 4.4 per 1,000 children under 5 — well above the Texas state figure (3.17) and slightly above the national rate (4.21).

The supply density tracks the corporate relocations of the 2010s and 2020s — Toyota North America, JPMorgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, Capital One — that brought tens of thousands of working professionals to Collin County and pulled center capacity with them.

Workforce — 33/100

Childcare workers in Plano face the same wage compression that defines the broader Dallas-Fort Worth metro — median $14.31/hour against a local living wage of $24.14 — yielding a wage-to-living-wage ratio of 59.3%. The number is identical to Dallas because the OEWS wage data is metro-area-wide, but the cost-of-living lens is harsher in affluent Collin County: the same $14.31 buys less housing in Plano than it does in southern Dallas County.

Workforce Health is the dimension where Plano's overall strong showing breaks down. A score of 32.5/100 reflects a labor-market reality the Frisco-McKinney-Plano corridor has not solved.

Family strain — 56/100

Mothers' labor force participation among kids under 6 sits at 62.5% in Plano — close to the Texas state average and below the 68.2% national rate. Single-parent households make up just 19.7% of families with kids — among the lowest single-parent shares of any Texas city in the index (behind League City, Frisco, and Pearland) and one of the lowest in the dataset overall. The combination is consistent with Plano's professional-corporate-suburban demographic profile: stable two-parent households where a meaningful share of mothers opt out of the workforce while children are young, often because the second income, after taxes and childcare, doesn't change the household standard of living enough to justify the trade.

Policy support — 48/100

Inherited from Texas. The state enrolls 52% of 4-year-olds in public pre-K and 11% of 3-year-olds at $4,682 per child, meets 2 of NIEER's 10 quality benchmarks, reaches 16.4% of eligible children with CCDF subsidies, and offers zero weeks of paid family leave. Plano ISD's pre-K offerings track state policy.

In-home care in Plano

In-home care in Plano reflects the broader Dallas-Fort Worth nanny market with full-time live-out rates in line with the Collin County professional cluster — generally on the higher end of metro norms given the household income concentration. Au pair placements through the State Department's J-1 program have grown sharply across Frisco, McKinney, and Plano, where multi-kid families with spare bedrooms find the all-in math competitive with two full-time center spots. Nanny shares between corporate-relocation households are increasingly common as well.

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; 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).

Methodology. The State of Childcare Index 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). Each dimension draws on publicly available federal data: U.S. Census ACS (5-year), DOL Women's Bureau NDCP, BLS OEWS and QCEW, the Buffett/BPC/CCAoA childcaregap.org dataset, NIEER State of Preschool, and HHS ACF CCDF reports. 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: /research/methodology.