The COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous and rapid change to the child care market across the country. Many center-based providers closed in spring 2020 and use of center-based child care dropped across the country. Studying these trends and how they progressed throughout the pandemic is important to understand the postpandemic supply of center-based child care.

This brief presents findings from the first study to examine detailed data on the supply of center-based child care—defined here as the number of licensed facilities and total licensed capacity in those facilities—in the District of Columbia in the wake of COVID-19. Specifically, we found the following:

• As of September 2022, the overall supply of DC’s center-based child care had returned to and surpassed prepandemic levels, after decreasing during the pandemic’s height.
• The average size of DC centers increased slightly during the pandemic, driven by a growing number of centers licensed to enroll more than 130 children.
• There were additional changes in the composition of centers in the District by Ward, nontraditional-hour child care provision, age groups served, subsidy voucher acceptance, participation in Capital Quality, and Capital Quality designations.

Findings suggest that though the overall supply center-based child care in DC has recovered from the pandemic, more support for center-based options with a diversity of characteristics could help maintain and grow a child care supply that can better serve all families living in DC.

In a companion brief, we present findings on trends in the licensed home-based child care supply. We also show results across centers and homes in an Urban Wire blog post. The District of Columbia Child Care Policy Research Partnership will continue tracking trends in the supply of child care across the District over the coming years.