Just 7% of small-business owners say the child care crisis is a critical problem. Here’s why

Child care costs are growing. Access is declining. But small businesses aren’t too concerned about the impact on business.

The National Federation of Independent Business recently released its quadrennial report on the most pressing problems for small-business owners in the U.S. For the first time, it asked about the “cost and availability of child care,” which owners ranked as their 66th most pressing concern of the 75 assessed.

Moreover, only 7% of small-business owners considered the problem “critical,” and 40% didn’t consider it a problem at all.

This might be surprising, considering that child care costs increased 32% for American households from 2019 to 2023, and the share of parents without access to child care grew from 17.7% at the end of 2023 to 22.2%in the early months of 2024.

But as Holly Wade, executive director of the NFIB Research Center, says, the results suggest that the problem is relatively limited in scope right now, at least in the eyes of business owners: “For some employers, they’re able to work around child care issues fairly easily, accommodate scheduling conflicts — to the level of issues, for instance, like the cost of health insurance.”

Indeed, in the NFIB report, health insurance costs ranked at the top of small-business owners’ concerns, as it has since 1986. The costs of supplies and inventories, economic uncertainty, and federal taxes were among other top issues for owners this year.

Plus, if businesses have a “younger demographic of employees or an industry that has higher turnover seasonal employment,” child care issues might not be a pain point for them at all, Wade adds.

Other recent reports, however, still indicate that these pressures are impacting workforces. 29% of job switchers identified a lack of child care benefits as their top motivation in looking for another job, according to a 2024 report from Care.com. Women’s labor force participation is now lagging compared to pre-pandemic levels — and taking care of “the home or family” is the primary reason mothers are not working, according to the Pew Research Center.

And as Inc. previously reported, there are still small-business owners who already believe that a lack of child care is negatively impacting their business — even if it may not be their top concern.

— By Sarah Lynch

This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc.

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