Study: Families Moving From Urban to Suburban Areas Post-Pandemic

Over the past year, headlines about the “urban exodus” linked to fallout from COVID-19 have abounded. Expensive cities like New York in particular have experienced a lot of churn, with millions moving out but millions more taking their place. We wanted to know - how did the pandemic impact where families live and the availability of child care in those areas? These are some of the questions we set out to answer using Winnie data on parents searching for child care per city and the number of open child care spaces per city.

Methodology

Winnie is a childcare marketplace where parents go to find daycare and preschool. Every month, Winnie collects data about availability at centers from thousands of childcare providers. 

We looked at the ratio of open childcare spots per searching parent user, comparing February 2020 (pre-pandemic) to February 2021. A negative trend means there are less open spaces this year per parent searching for care, and a positive trend means there are more open spaces per parent searching for care.

Key Findings

1. Overall there are more open spaces in the United States than there are parents searching for childcare. Right now there are 2 open child care spots in the United States per parent looking for care. However, these open spaces are not evenly distributed.
2. In major, expensive cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, it has become easier to get an open space in a child care center than it was last year. This provides some evidence that families with young children (those searching for child care) have migrated out of these cities.
3. In many suburban areas and less expensive cities, the opposite is true. There are less open spaces this year per parent searching for care than there were last year. It has become harder to get a childcare spot in these markets.
4. The expensive suburbs also saw a trend in more open spaces per parent searching for care indicating that families are leaving these expensive suburbs for less expensive ones where the price of real estate per square foot is lower.

Detailed Findings

Overall

Overall there are more open spaces than there are parents searching for care with a national average of 2 open spaces per parent searching for childcare. In some cities this is especially pronounced. In Seattle there are as many as 15 open spaces per parent looking for care.

Perhaps most telling though is what happened in these markets compared to last year. A positive trend means there are more open spaces per parent searching for care. This means Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brooklyn and New York are seeing a big increase in open spaces per parent searching for care compared to last year. Markets like Austin, Bellevue and San Antonio are seeing a decrease. In other words, less child care is available in Austin, Bellevue and San Antonio, indicating more families with young children are moving to these areas.

Deep Dive: New York

The urban locations in the NYC DMA (Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan). experienced a big increase in the ratio of open spaces to parents looking for care compared to last year indicating families with young children moving out of these areas. Brooklyn leads the pack with a 143% increase in open spaces to parents looking for care compared to February 2020. Conversely, areas like Huntington and Hoboken experienced the biggest decrease in the ratio of open spaces to parents looking for care compared to last year implying that more families with young children are moving into these areas.

Search Data

We also looked at Winnie data through a different lens to see if we’d come to a similar conclusion. In this analysis, we classified childcare searches on Winnie by either suburban, urban, or rural using the methodology defined in this analysis. What we found was that in February 2020, suburban searches and urban searches on Winnie were roughly equal. Now we see that suburban searches have grown to twice the volume of urban searches. 

Looking Ahead

It remains to be seen if demand for child care in urban areas will pick back up as things continue to return to normal and some workers return to offices again. In the meantime, parents in urban areas where long waiting lists and lack of availability was the norm may be delighted to find that they can get their child into the preschool of their dreams. If new “zoom towns” become the norm, these towns will need more childcare supply to meet the increase in demand. We’ll continue to watch these trends at Winnie.