As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Virginia Beach ranks the 43rd largest city in the nation.

Sailors at Naval Air Station Oceana and the Joint Expeditionary Base ship out on schedules that don't bend to a daycare's drop-off window. Around them, a Virginia Beach family with one infant in a center pays $15,969 a year — about $1,200 below the national median, eating 17.6% of the city's $90,685 median income. The arithmetic produces a 57/100 score on Beverly's the score, second-best in Virginia. The local childcare workforce, paid $13.62 an hour against a $25.03 living wage, earns less than the cost of one of the infant slots they staff — a Workforce Health subscore of 6.4/100. Hampton Roads families afford the bill on dual-military or military-civilian incomes; the people minding their children cannot.

Key highlights & actionable takeaways

Second in Virginia, score 57 (Moderate); $90,685 median income holds infant-care burden to 17.6%.
Infant center care: $15,969 a year, about $1,200 below the national median; rent ratio 0.81.
Workforce 6/100 — childcare workers earn $13.62/hour, just 54% of the metro's $25.03 single-adult living wage.

Actionable takeaways

Virginia Beach is the largest of the five Hampton Roads cities sharing the same $13.62 metro wage. Reporters covering naval-region childcare should treat Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Newport News, and Hampton as a single workforce market — five cities, one wage floor.
Naval Air Station Oceana and Joint Expeditionary Base deployment cycles drive demand patterns no center calendar can match. Local follow-ups should ask the Virginia Beach Department of Human Services and the bases' Fleet & Family Support Centers about wait times for off-base coverage during major underway windows.
The 6/100 workforce score is the deepest pay-to-cost gap in the dataset. Watch which Virginia Beach centers are absorbing the gap through closures and which are absorbing it through tuition hikes — both choices push different cohorts of families out.

Affordability — 79/100

A Virginia Beach family with one infant in a center pays about $15,969 a year — roughly $1,331 a month, or 17.6% of the city's $90,685 median household income. The independent-city designation matters here: prices reflect the city itself, not a surrounding county, and Virginia Beach's military-economy income floor (Naval Air Station Oceana, Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story) keeps the burden share lower than in much of the rest of Virginia. Center care costs about 81 cents on the dollar versus monthly rent ($1,649). Compared with Virginia statewide ($17,636 average infant center cost) and the national median ($17,163), Virginia Beach families pay roughly $1,200 to $1,700 less per child per year — a meaningful bend, but one only visible because so many local households are dual-military or military-civilian and pull two stable incomes.

Supply — 62/100

Virginia Beach offers about 59 licensed slots for every 100 children under 5 with working parents — well below the national figure of 73 per 100 but among the best supply ratios in Hampton Roads. The city has roughly 82 licensed establishments serving 27,251 children under 5 (3.01 per 1,000 kids), slightly under Virginia's statewide density of 3.63. The state-level supply gap, per the Bipartisan Policy Center, sits at 13.4% — among the narrower gaps in the South Atlantic, which provides Virginia Beach families more program-shopping latitude than families in most US metros face.

Workforce — 6/100

The median Virginia Beach childcare worker earns $13.62 an hour — about $28,340 a year. That covers just 54.4% of a single-adult living wage in the metro ($25.03/hour), one of the deepest pay-to-cost gaps in the entire 250-city dataset. Wages in the metro's 2,970-strong childcare workforce sit nearly $2 below the national median of $15.41/hour, even as the city's living costs run higher than the national norm. The result is the same as the national pattern only sharper: provider turnover is structural, classrooms close on short notice, and parents who can pay for in-home or private care increasingly do.

Family strain — 60/100

Mothers of children under 6 in Virginia Beach participate in the labor force at 69.47% — just above the national rate of 68.21% and consistent with Virginia statewide (69.77%). About 32% of households with kids are headed by a single parent. The city's high mothers' LFP reflects what the local data quietly tells you: when 68% of children under 6 are in homes where every available parent works, the question isn't whether to use childcare — it's how many providers a family has to assemble to cover the schedule.

Policy support — 50/100

Virginia's state-funded pre-K reaches 22% of 4-year-olds and 3% of 3-year-olds, with $6,119 per child in spending. The Commonwealth has no state paid family or medical leave program. CCDF child-care subsidies reach 32.2% of eligible families — a stronger reach than Tennessee's 16% but still leaving most families on their own. Policy is measured at the state level.

In-home care in Virginia Beach

In-home care in Virginia Beach typically reflects metro-wide nanny market patterns, with full-time live-out rates in line with the broader Hampton Roads market. Naval-deployment schedules drive heavier-than-typical demand for nannies and night/weekend caregivers, since center hours don't bend to underway calendars. Nanny shares between two military families are increasingly common as a cost-splitter, and au pair placements have grown among officer households drawn to the predictable monthly cost.

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.