First Children’s Finance – Annual child care supply/demand gap analysis released

First Children's Finance (FCF) recently released its annual Child Care Need Summary. A key takeaway from this year’s report is that the Greater Minnesota child care shortage remains dire, with the region being short of 42,581 child care slots as of June 2025. It is not the worst year for Greater Minnesota’s child care shortage, but these persistent gaps continue to underscore the need for lawmakers to redouble their efforts to support tools and policies that will help close these gaps.

FCF also has regional analysis around child care needs that are available at the same link, and provides child care data for the region and cities within that region that are useful for decision-makers to understand and plan for solutions to child care challenges.

For questions anout issues surrounding child care, please contact GMNP Executive Director Darielle Dannen at djdannen@flaherty-hood.com.