As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Round Rock ranks the 211th largest city in the nation.

In a Williamson County suburb anchoring the Austin metro's northern arc, a Round Rock family pays $13,092 a year for infant center care — about $7,000 less than a comparable family pays in the Austin urban core, and $4,000 less than the national-median household. Median household income here is $97,187, roughly 24% above the national figure, lifted by Dell, Apple, and Samsung's I-35 corridor build-out. The arithmetic produces a 13.5% childcare cost burden, well inside the Strong band of Beverly's the score. Round Rock scores 66/100, ranking 15th nationally and ninth in Texas. Mothers' labor-force participation runs softer than peer Texas suburbs at 63%, suggesting that Williamson County's housing prices and household-income mix still let one parent scale back during the under-six years. The math works for the second income; some households decide it doesn't have to.

Key highlights & actionable takeaways

15th nationally, score 66 (Strong) — Williamson County core of the Austin metro's northern arc.
Infant care: $13,092 a year, 13.5% of $97,187 median income; $7,000 below central-Austin tuition.
Mothers' LFP 63% — softer than peer Texas suburbs; single-parent share 26%, six points below national.

Actionable takeaways

Round Rock is the Austin-metro version of the Collin County story. Williamson County extends the high-income suburban pattern to I-35 north — Dell, Apple, and Samsung's tech-corridor build-out doing what Toyota and JPMorgan did for DFW. Reporters should pair the two regions in any Texas affluent-suburb feature.
The $7,000 tuition gap with central Austin is the migration driver. The single most concrete number explaining young-family movement out of the Austin urban core; reporters covering the metro housing story can use this as the childcare-economics half of the equation.
The 63% mothers' LFP is the soft signal worth investigating. Below Carrollton, Frisco, and Plano, this suggests Williamson households still have headroom to opt one earner out — a pattern that may shift as housing costs continue to climb.

Affordability — 95/100

Center-based infant care in Round Rock averages $13,092 a year, roughly $1,091 a month. Williamson County, which Round Rock anchors, sits in the middle band of national infant-care prices, modestly above the Texas state median of $11,917 — Austin-area prices have crept up over the last several years as the metro has densified. The income side is what carries the affordability score: median household income in Round Rock is $97,187, roughly 24% above the national median. Stack the two together and infant care eats 13.5% of household income, well inside the Strong band of the index.

Family child care comes in at $11,474 a year, a meaningful discount on center care. Toddler center care runs $12,028, preschool $11,149. A typical Round Rock family with one infant in center care pays roughly $4,000 less per year than the national median household pays for the same care — and roughly $7,000 less than a comparable family in the Austin urban core, which is one reason the Williamson County suburbs absorb so much of the metro's young-family migration.

Supply — 65/100

Round Rock counts roughly 56 licensed slots for every 100 kids under five with working parents, with 146 licensed establishments in its Williamson County footprint — a density of 3.74 per thousand kids under five, modestly stronger than most DFW suburbs of comparable size. This is not a childcare desert. Williamson County's supply has expanded faster than most Texas counties over the last decade in step with the Dell, Apple, and Samsung corridor build-out along I-35, but waitlists for infant rooms remain real inside the highest-demand school district boundaries. The city benefits from operating inside Texas, whose statewide BPC supply gap of 7.9% is the smallest in the country.

Workforce — 45/100

Childcare workers in the Round Rock-Williamson County market earn a median $14.34 an hour — $29,830 a year. The local single-adult living wage is $23.71 an hour, putting childcare wages at 60% of what one adult needs to live in Williamson County alone. The wage gap reflects the same pattern playing out across the Austin metro: housing costs have risen faster than service-sector wages for a decade, pushing childcare workers into longer commutes from Pflugerville, Hutto, and the Taylor side of the county. Texas offers no state-funded workforce supplement.

Family strain — 50.0/100

Sixty-three percent of Round Rock mothers with kids under six are in the labor force — five points below the national 68% — and the city's single-parent share, at 26%, is meaningfully below the national 32%. The reading lands middle-of-pack rather than top-tier because the mothers' LFP number runs softer than peer Texas suburbs like Carrollton (74%) and Frisco. The likely read: at Williamson County's housing prices and household-income mix, a meaningful share of households still find the math works for one parent to scale back during the under-six years rather than absorb full-time infant care plus a long commute.

Policy support — 48.1/100

Texas policy inherits down to Round Rock. The state enrolls 52% of four-year-olds in pre-K and spends $4,682 per child, roughly two-thirds the spend of more policy-active states. Texas offers no state-mandated paid family leave. CCDF subsidy reach covers 16.4% of eligible kids statewide. Texas meets two of NIEER's ten quality benchmarks. Round Rock's national #15 ranking holds despite this dimension, not because of it. Policy is measured at the state level.

In-home care in Round Rock

In-home care in Round Rock typically reflects metro-wide Austin nanny market patterns, with full-time live-out rates in the Williamson County suburbs running somewhat below the central-Austin band, in line with the broader Texas suburban market. Nanny shares between two families are increasingly common in the tech-corridor neighborhoods around the Dell campus and along the Parmer Lane build-out. Au pair hosting is well-established among the international relocation families that have anchored much of Round Rock's population growth, drawing on Austin-area coordinators from the State Department-designated J-1 sponsor agencies.

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.