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In the 2010s, Wisconsin’s childcare industry was in freefall, and the state lost about 2,000 programs from 2013 to 2019. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and childcare workers were asked to continue serving families, the industry started to stabilize as the rest of the world seemed to collapse.
Wisconsin providers and advocates chalk that resilience up to state funding that childcare programs started receiving during the pandemic. That funding, originally from federal pandemic relief money, went directly to providers to help them stay afloat. Since the funding first started in March 2020 under a program called Child Care Counts, the number of providers in the state increased by about 200 overall…