The demand for child care services fell during the 2007–2009 recession as rising unemployment destroyed some of the demand for these services by those no longer employed. The graph shows annual revenue for child day care service providers as well as the U.S. population aged 14 years or younger for each of the years shown. The growth in population in this age group was 36% over this period (1997–2011) while the inflation-adjusted rate of growth in revenues of child day care service providers was 52%.

The revenue data shown here are from reports on the industry as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau with the NAICS code 6244: Child Day Care Services.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2002 and 2011
Market size: $21.7 and $32.8 billion respectively
Source: Annual and Quarterly Services, part of quarterly reporting on the service industry as a whole done by the Census Bureau and made available online here. For the years prior to 2011, data are from the Economic Census reports for the years 1997, 2002, and 2007.
Original source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census
Posted on September 19, 2012