By Emily Peck

(Excerpt)

The child care sector in the U.S. is kind of a hodgepodge industry made up primarily of small businesses with a few larger operators like Bright Horizons tossed in. The data on the industry is spotty, but experts point to this government data to estimate that there are around 130,000 centers and around 433,000 in-home providers (many unlicensed) where parents bring their children to someone’s house.

“It’s hard to track. You could be in someone’s home, in a bigger center, on a military base,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, the director of child care and early education at the Center for Law and Social Policy.

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