TRENTON, NJ — On the 5th annual “Day Without Child Care", a coalition of parents, early learning educators, labor unions, and community organizations launched the Child Care For All NJ campaign today with a rally at the Statehouse Annex, demanding that New Jersey lawmakers prioritize childcare during budget negotiations.

The rally brought together working families and the overwhelmingly women-of-color workforce that cares for New Jersey's children. Speakers called for nothing less than a transformation of how the state treats child care: not as a private burden for families to bear alone, but as public economic infrastructure essential to the state's workforce and future.

The Crisis by the Numbers

A family in New Jersey, center-based infant care for one child costs an average of $20,213 per year—roughly $1,684 per month—making it the single largest household expense for most working families, outpacing rent, car payments, or in-state college tuition. That equals 16% of yearly earnings for just one child.

New Jersey’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) was frozen in 2025 through 2026 for nine months and raised family copays to 6% of household income, leaving thousands of working families struggling to keep their child care and forcing many parents to make impossible choices between paying for care, rent, groceries, and other essentials.

While Governor Mikie Sherrill’s FY 2027 budget proposal includes $18 million to reopen CCAP’s financial assistance for eligible families, it still falls far short of what New Jersey families and child care providers truly need - expansion of eligibility so more low-and moderate-income families can access the program, and a living wage for providers.

The current CCAP system remains underfunded, provider reimbursement rates are too low to sustain quality care or support living wages for early educators, and too many families continue to be locked out of affordable child care altogether.

What the Campaign Demands

The Child Care For All NJ campaign is calling on lawmakers to:

"When families can't access affordable child care, workers are forced to lose income or leave the workforce entirely. Children are excluded from socialization and early learning opportunities. And the early learning educators – mostly women, disproportionately Black, Brown, and immigrant women—struggle to pay their bills without access to healthcare coverage and retirement security. New Jersey can afford to do better," said NJ Citizen Action’s Work Justice Program Director Yarrow Willman-Cole.

“New Jersey should fund childcare like other infrastructure that is essential to our economy. Parents need childcare options that are accessible and affordable so they can go to work. Childcare providers need livable wages and good benefits. Our budget should fund these priorities. We should be taxing millionaires and profitable corporations to make childcare affordable in NJ,” said Ken McNamara, President of CWA Local 1037, which represents 900 in-home family childcare providers.

“Child care is not a side issue — it is essential infrastructure that makes every other job possible. Our members, many of them working mothers, immigrants, and women of color, know firsthand that when childcare is unaffordable or unavailable, families are forced to make impossible choices between work, income, and caring for their children. At the same time, the educators and providers doing this critical work are too often underpaid and undervalued. New Jersey cannot build a strong economy on the backs of workers while refusing to invest in the care system that sustains them. 32BJ proudly stands with the Child Care for All NJ campaign in demanding fully funded child care, expanded access for working families, and living wages and benefits for providers. It is time for the wealthiest corporations and individuals to pay their fair share so every family in New Jersey can thrive, “ said Ana Maria Hill, Vice President and New Jersey State Director of 32BJ SEIU.”

"New Jersey is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, precisely because we have a strong working class that makes industries profitable. Workers who  show up to drive the buses, drive the trucks, stock the shelves, move goods in warehouses, cook the food, clean offices, care for our elderly and sick; educate and protect our children. Millionaires and billionaires exist because they continue to extract wealth from workers and our communities. It is workers who create; millionaires and billionaires who take. And still we ask working class families to choose between paying rent and keeping a child in care. This is a political choice, a moral choice; not an economic necessity. Working class people will no longer tighten their belts while millionaires and billionaires continue to profit off of low wages and from tax breaks. Child care is fundamental to our communities; to our families. It is an infrastructure that benefits everyone. It is way overdue and the time has come to tax the wealthiest individuals and most profitable industries in this state so that every family has access to affordable child care and every early educator can do this critical work with dignity, health coverage, and retirement security," said Trina Scordo, MSW, Executive Director of NJ Communities United.

“It is past time to tackle the problem of accessible, affordable and high quality child care for our NJ families. Its not only the right thing to do for the future development of our children. It also makes economic sense along with sustainability of the workforce,” said Peg Kinsell, Policy Director of SPAN Parent Advocacy Network.

“Childcare is a right, not a privilege. Right now, in New Jersey, families are being priced out while the very workers who make care possible are underpaid and undervalued. That’s not an accident, it’s a policy failure. We need policies that support working families and transform this broken system into one that works—where families can access care, workers are paid and treated with dignity, and the rich finally pay their fair share," said Calandria Resende-Ortiz, Policy Analyst,  League of Women Voters of New Jersey

“There are over 50,000 domestic workers in New Jersey who provide care and support to thousands of families, and yet they still confront barriers to accessing childcare themselves. Childcare must be seen as essential economic infrastructure that requires immediate public investment, not as an individual burden for low-income families. There is a direct link between those who clean and care for homes and those who provide childcare. We urge the New Jersey government to work with us to create a fair and accessible care infrastructure with a system that eliminates barriers of race, gender, immigration status, income, and language. No parent should have to choose between paying rent and caring for their children. Funding this system is a way to repair the historical debt to women of color and immigrants, including those in the domestic work sector, whose work has been systematically devalued," said Evelyn Saz, National Domestic Workers Alliance New Jersey Lead Organizer and coordinator of the New Jersey Domestic Workers Coalition.

"The child care crisis in New Jersey is a two-fold problem of accessibility and affordability. Finding affordable, quality child care in New Jersey is nearly impossible for working families, just as it is nearly impossible for the providers—overwhelmingly women of color—to earn a livable wage for this critical work. New Jersey must do better," said Laura Sullivan, Director of the Economic Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

About the Day Without Child Care

The 5th annual Day Without Child Care is a national day of action and the largest solidarity action in the childcare industry. It celebrates a growing movement of providers and parents, mostly women and in particular women of color, demanding robust public investment to ensure affordable, quality childcare for working families, and that early learning educators earn living wages and have access to affordable healthcare and retirement benefits.

Coalition Partners

Campaign members include: NJ Communities United, NJ Citizen Action, CWA Local 1037, SEIU 32BJ, Laundry Workers Center, Indivisible Cranbury, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, New Jersey Domestic Workers Coalition, New Labor, SPAN, Parent Advocacy Network, Perinatal Health Equity Initiative, Wind of the Spirit, Workers United LDFSJB, and more.