When Jessie Beck brings 3-year-old daughter Halle to Jubilee Day Care, she's confident Halle is in good hands.

"It's always hard as a parent to leave your babies and your toddlers with other people while you have to go to work,” said Beck. “I've always felt that Jubilee was a really trustworthy, caring place, and they've given my children love and guidance and care and everything I could've asked for."

But with the day care struggling to find staff, Beck is one of the lucky parents. The private center can't operate at full capacity. With an open teacher position, the toddler class is empty.

"They're not able to open as many classrooms as they can so that more children can experience the love and care that my children have gotten to have,” said Beck.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there's 100,000 fewer child care workers than there were before the pandemic.

"Salaries increased other places and people just chose that as an alternative,” said director Krystle Mabb. “It’s a lot easier to just go there, to do the hard work somewhere else and we weren't able to keep up, we can only pay so much.”

Mabb says hiring issues can be attributed to low pay. The median pay for child care workers is $13.71 an hour; at Jubilee, the toddler teacher position starts at $17 an hour.

Despite two recent tuition increases, Mabb says she can't stay competitive with state funded pre-schools or other professions.

"In order to increase wages especially with minimum wage going up in January, we have to increase the tuition but then you're putting that fall on the parents and it's hard to continuously do that to them because then they're going to look for other places to bring their kids if they can't afford it any more,” said Mabb. “So, you want to keep it reasonable for them but you want to increase the staff wages especially for those who have been there for a long time and put their whole heart into this."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of child care workers will decline an additional 2% by 2032.

"I think in the long run it kind of hurts everybody because the staff isn't getting the raises they deserve because we're not getting the funding that we need and then the families would suffer if we raised it more so it's just kind of a big circle,” said Mabb.

While there's no plans to close Jubilee, Beck thinks about those kids on the waiting list who are missing out.

"I know that there's not openings for children at other day cares and I know that Jubilee itself already has a really long waitlist so it would be devastating not only because of the childcare i would have to find, the impact it would have on our careers but it would be devastating to my daughter because she really loves her teachers and her friends here,” said Beck.