As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Vermont has no cities among the largest 250 in the nation.
A Vermont childcare worker earns 73% of a single-adult living wage — more than ten points above the national benchmark and the highest provider-pay ratio of any state in the Northeast. That number is not an accident. Act 76, passed in 2023, directed substantial state funds at childcare worker wages directly, and the result is one of the very few US states where a person can earn a working-class income from this profession alone. Vermont also enrolls 76% of its 4-year-olds in state pre-K, the most universal access in America. It ranks 6th of 50 nationally. And yet center infant care still eats 22.6% of household income, slightly worse than the national figure, and the state has no paid family leave at all. The data below traces what happens when a state invests heavily in pre-K and providers, and lets the under-3 cohort fend for itself.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- Strong (63/100), 6th nationally; childcare workers earn 73% of a living wage, the best provider-pay ratio in the Northeast.
- 76% of 4-year-olds and 58% of 3-year-olds enrolled in state pre-K — the most universal pre-K access in America.
- No state-mandated paid leave; infant care still eats 22.6% of household income, above the national norm.
Affordability — 17/100
Vermont's affordability picture is the weakest of its five dimensions, scoring just 17.0. Center infant care averages $17,661 a year (NDCP, forward-projected to 2025) — close to the $17,163 national figure in absolute terms but heavy in a state with $78,024 median household income. Infant care eats 22.6% of the median household's income, slightly above the national 21.9% benchmark.
The childcare-to-rent ratio of 1.23 is the highest in our nine-state Northeast set — the average Vermont family with one infant in care pays 23% more for daycare than for rent. That ratio is partly an artifact of Vermont's moderate housing market: median gross rent runs $1,193, low for the region. The childcare price is not extreme; the rent is uncommonly affordable, which inverts the ratio.
The score is the lowest in our nine-state set after Massachusetts, and it is the central tension in Vermont's report. The state has built one of the country's most ambitious early childhood policy infrastructures — universal pre-K, strong workforce wages, deep CCDF — and the price experience for the median family with an infant in private care has not meaningfully improved as a result. The benefits of Vermont's policy investment fall heavily on 3- and 4-year-olds (where pre-K substitutes for private pay) and on the workforce providing the care; they have not yet meaningfully reduced what families pay for the under-3 cohort.
A typical Burlington family with one infant in center care spends roughly the same as an Allentown family — and earns roughly the same.
Supply — 98/100
Supply scores 98.0 — second-best in our nine-state Northeast set, just below Maine's perfect 100. Vermont has 267 licensed childcare establishments — 9.52 per 1,000 kids under 5, more than double the 4.21 national rate. The state's 19,500 licensed slots cover roughly 77% of estimated demand, with a 27.7% BPC supply gap that matches the national figure exactly.
The establishment density figure is the headline. Vermont, like Maine, benefits from a small under-5 population (28,053 kids — the smallest in the country except Wyoming) that is structurally easier to serve than denser-state demand. But the state has also actively built and sustained a regulatory environment supportive of small providers and family child care, and the 9.52 establishments-per-1k figure reflects that. The state's mountainous geography means the supply density is uneven — Chittenden, Addison, and Washington counties have stronger access than the Northeast Kingdom — but the aggregate picture is strong.
Workforce — 96/100
Workforce Health scores 96.1 — the strongest in our nine-state Northeast set and one of the highest in the country. The median Vermont childcare worker earns $18.19 an hour — $37,830 a year — covering 73.0% of the state's $24.92 single-adult living wage. That ratio is more than ten points above the national 62.6% benchmark and is the single highest in our nine-state set.
This is the result of explicit policy. Vermont's Child Care Financial Assistance Program reform, expanded under Act 76 in 2023, directed substantial state funds toward childcare worker wages — both directly through subsidies tied to provider participation and indirectly through the rate-setting infrastructure for state-funded programs. The state has effectively subsidized the workforce side of the supply equation, which is one of the structural reasons supply has held up.
The state's small total workforce (1,120 childcare workers — the smallest of any Northeast state) limits the absolute scale, but the per-worker economic conditions are the best in the region. A Vermont childcare worker is among the very few in America who can earn a livable working-class income from this profession alone.
Family Strain — 76/100
Family Strain scores 75.5 — strong. Mothers' labor force participation for kids under 6 is 78.4%, ten points above the national 68.2% and the highest in our nine-state Northeast set. The single-parent share is 31.8%, near the national average. Median household income is $78,024.
The high mothers' LFP figure reflects both economic necessity and functional childcare access — a state where 78% of mothers with young kids work cannot sustain that pattern without a working childcare system. Vermont's strong supply and workforce dimensions enable the high participation rate, and the high participation rate then sustains the demand that justifies the system. It is the cleanest virtuous-cycle pattern in our Northeast dataset.
Policy Support — 49/100
Policy Support scores 49.0 — middling, and the result is more interesting than the number suggests because Vermont's policy mix is unusually unbalanced. State pre-K reaches 76% of 4-year-olds and 58% of 3-year-olds — the most universal pre-K access in America. Per-pupil pre-K spending is $8,632, with 7 of 10 NIEER quality benchmarks met. CCDF reaches 11.3% of eligible kids monthly, serving 2,200 children — modest reach reflecting Vermont's small eligible population.
The dimension is dragged down by Vermont's lack of any state-mandated paid family leave program (NPWF, March 2026) — the state joins New Hampshire and Pennsylvania as the Northeast's leave-policy laggards. Vermont has debated paid family leave for years, and a partial program for state employees exists, but no statewide private-sector mandate has been enacted.
The pattern is distinctive: Vermont has chosen to invest most heavily in the 3-and-4-year-old pre-K cohort and in the workforce providing care, while leaving the postpartum-leave gap and the broader infant-and-toddler cost structure largely to private payers and federal CCDF. That choice has produced extraordinary outcomes on the dimensions it targeted (workforce, pre-K access) and weaker outcomes on the dimensions it did not (affordability for under-3s, paid leave).
City spotlight
Vermont has no cities in the index's top-250 city panel — its largest municipality, Burlington, falls below the population threshold required for inclusion in the city-level analysis. The state's childcare experience is best read at the state aggregate or through the Burlington-South Burlington metropolitan area, where the supply and workforce stories track the state-level numbers but cost burden runs slightly higher in Chittenden County than the state average.
In-home care in Vermont
Vermont's in-home care market is small and structurally distinct from its higher-income Northeast peers. Burlington supports a modest professional nanny market with going rates of $20-$28 an hour, with thin agency infrastructure and a workforce drawn largely from local college populations and family child care providers operating as live-out caregivers. The state's small population and dispersed geography make professional nanny placement difficult outside the Burlington area.
Au pair placements in Vermont are uncommon — the state's housing patterns and lower household income concentrations limit the natural demand for live-in childcare, and the state has not developed the placement infrastructure that characterizes Connecticut and New Jersey markets.
The dominant in-home care reality in Vermont is the family child care home — small registered programs operating from providers' own homes, often serving 4-8 children, frequently the children of close-knit local families. The state's strong workforce policy environment has supported these providers' wages in a way that has kept many in the field through the post-2020 wave of national center closures, and they remain the practical backbone of childcare access in Vermont's rural counties.
The state's geographic dispersion creates a particular kind of in-home care economy. A working family in Hardwick, Lyndonville, or Hardwick Center cannot meaningfully commute to a center an hour away in Burlington or Montpelier — and the math of running a center for a small population of working families in those communities does not work. Family child care fills the gap by serving 4-6 local kids out of a single home, often with the provider's own children mixed in. The state's licensing structure has been deliberately accommodating to this model, recognizing it as the only practical solution for much of the state's geography.
This network is fragile in ways the supply score does not capture. Many family child care providers in Vermont are themselves over 50 and approaching retirement; the pipeline of younger providers replacing them is thin, and the state's workforce policy investment has slowed but not reversed the demographic transition. Over the next decade, the state's Supply score may drift downward as retirements outpace replacements, regardless of whether wages continue to rise.
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).