Child care slots were down last year from 2022

Infant and toddler care slots dropped by over 3,400 from 2022 to 2023. Slots for preschool children also dropped by over 2,000 since 2022.

Note from data source:
• “Slots” represent the total licensed capacity of all licensed centers and homes.
• Unless otherwise stated, numbers in this table for 2002 through 2009 represent monthly averages over the calendar year. Numbers for 2010 through 2020 point-in-time counts from January of each year. Unless otherwise stated, all numbers from 2010 through 2022 are commissioned annually from 2-1-1 Child Care Grant.
• The term “capacity” as used by the United Way/2-1-1 Child Care refers to licensed capacity, rather than number of children the program is actually willing to serve. To calculate these numbers from raw data, we use the sum of “enrollment” and “vacancies” as that represents the actual number of slots offered by programs.
Chart: José Luis Martínez / CT MirrorSource: CT Voices 2024 report: State of Early Childhood. Report used data provided by United Way/2-1-1 Child Care.Created with Datawrapper