Wyoming’s Childcare Shortage: Business Solutions for a Business Problem

Across the United States, childcare shortages are quietly constraining economic growth — keeping workers, disproportionately women, out of the labor force. Wyoming offers an unusual case of a state tackling the problem not as social policy but as economic infrastructure. Since 2023, the Wyoming Business Council has led an interagency effort that treats childcare the way states treat roads or broadband: as a precondition for workforce participation. The results so far include startup grants for new providers in underserved areas, regulatory reform to unlock home-based operations, and a data system that maps supply gaps at the community level — all in a state where provider supply had collapsed by more than 25% in a decade.

Roxanne O’Connor Kristin Fong and Feliciana Turner from the Wyoming Business Council join the Growth Lab to discuss what it takes to build childcare as economic infrastructure, what the business case looks like when you reframe the problem, and what other states and countries grappling with labor force participation gaps can learn from Wyoming’s approach.

Please register in advance. The Zoom session is open to the public.

Speakers: Roxanne O’Connor, DFS Support Services Division Administrator, Kristin Fong, Northwest Regional Director and Feliciana Turner, Wyoming Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Unit Manager, Wyoming Business Council

The Growth Lab’s “Development Talks” is a series of conversations with policymakers and academics working on economic growth and development in countries, regions, states, and cities in the US and around the world. The seminar provides a platform for practitioners and researchers to discuss both economic growth and development and analytical work centered on policy.