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At the Easterseals headquarters in Manchester, there are two empty classrooms, 15 vacant positions, and a waiting list of 250 kids whose families are hoping for a slot.
Kristen McGuigan, senior vice president for early childhood services, said she wants to fill those classrooms, but she hasn’t been able to hire the teachers she needs in order to do so.
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“The workforce is pretty scarce for teachers right now,” she said. A new report released this week found that New Hampshire is the best state in the nation for child well-being. But when it comes to child care, the state is seriously struggling.
Child care is expensive and, even for parents who can afford it, hard to come by. In New Hampshire, care for a toddler in a child care center costs an average of $12,469 per year, according to the report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
While that’s 9 percent of the median income for a married couple, it’s over 30 percent of the typical income for a single mom in New Hampshire.
“A good child care system is essential for kids to thrive and our economy to prosper. But our current approach fails kids, parents, and child care workers by every measure,” said Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“Without safe child care they can afford and get to, working parents face impossible choices, affecting not only their families, but their employers as well.”
Parents have had to make adjustments at work to deal with this situation - turning down a job offer, quitting a job, or finding work that is more child-friendly. Around 14 percent of N.H. kids under age 5 lived in a family where this was the case from 2020 to 2021.
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That has big economic consequences, costing the national economy around $122 billion. Women take these career hits five to eight times more often than men, the report found.
Across the state, more than 40 child care centers have closed in recent years, taking away 1,500 spots for children, said Rebecca Woitkowski, Kids Count Policy Director for New Futures, a nonprofit that does health advocacy and education.
The pay to do this work isn’t competitive when compared to retail jobs and customer service jobs, with child care workers earning less than those in 98 percent of other professions - $13.71 an hour is the national median, the report found.
One of the benefits Easterseals offers its workers is a discount for employees to enroll their own kids in child care. Both Maria Camacho and Mariah Reed, who care for the center’s youngest children, were happy to take advantage of that.
Camacho said she decided to take the job so she could work in the same place her 2-year-old daughter goes to school.
“It was nice,” she said.
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Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @amanda_gokee.