Despite the decline in inflation since last year, families with young children still face sharp increases in one of their biggest expenses — child care, the Wall Street Journal reported. The national average price of daycare and preschool services rose 6% in July from a year before, the Labor Department reported recently. That was nearly double the overall inflation rate of 3.2%, which was down from its recent peak of 9.1% in June last year. Parents could see their child-care bills climb higher this fall as providers boost tuition to cover rising costs and federal pandemic aid ceases. Many child-care providers closed permanently early in the pandemic, and child-care prices rose more slowly than the overall inflation rate from March 2021 to February 2023, while many Americans worked from home. Child-care inflation has picked up since then as workers returning to offices fueled more demand, pay for low-wage workers jumped amid labor shortages, and prices kept rising for other items. Child-care workers earned an average of $19.95 an hour in June, up 4.6% from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That remained well below the average $33.50 an hour earned by all service workers on private payrolls, making it hard for providers to attract workers in a hot job market. Wages and benefits account for 50% to 60% of the costs for child-care providers, according to the Treasury Department.
