NAICS code for daycare: 624410 for centers, home daycare and preschools

This page is for daycare and preschool owners filling in a NAICS or SIC field (an SBA loan, a grant, SAM.gov, an insurer, a tax return) and for sellers who sell to child care providers. It gives the code, the boundary cases, how many providers there are and where the lists of names are.

The NAICS code for daycare is 624410

624410 sits in Subsector 624, Social Assistance. In the 2022 revision the Census Bureau renamed it from Child Day Care Services to Child Care Services and widened the definition: establishments primarily engaged in providing care and early learning for infants and children, generally from birth through school age, which may also offer pre-kindergarten, kindergarten or before- and after-school programs.

The Census index lists these under 624410:

• Child care and infant care centers, group day care centers
• Family child care homes, and babysitting in the provider's own home
• Nursery schools, preschool centers and pre-kindergarten centers (except those that are part of an elementary school system)
• Head Start and Early Head Start programs run separately from schools
• Before- and after-school care run separately from schools

The code is the same for a center and a home daycare, for a for-profit and a nonprofit, and for a franchise and an independent. Older forms and sites that say "Child Day Care Services" mean the same code.

The codes next to it, and how to choose

A nanny employed by a family isn't a business in this code: the Census index excludes private households employing nannies, which fall under 814110, Private Households. A nanny agency that places nannies is 561311.

The tricky boundary is preschool versus school. A preschool or pre-K center on its own is 624410. A private school whose main program is kindergarten through later grades is 611110, even if it also has a preschool room. Pick by where most revenue comes from.

The SIC code for daycare

SIC 8351, Child Day Care Services, maps wholly to NAICS 624410 in the Census concordance. One difference: the SIC manual put babysitting services in 7299 (Miscellaneous Personal Services), while NAICS puts babysitting in the provider's own home in 624410. It's also on the SEC's EDGAR list (as "Services-Child Day Care Services"), so public daycare operators file under 8351. Adult day care was SIC 8322 (Individual and Family Social Services), which now maps to 624120.

How many daycare businesses there are

County Business Patterns 2023 counts 82,162 child care establishments with paid employees, 1,045,052 employees and $31.03 billion in annual payroll. The code didn't change between 2017 and 2022, only its title.

Child care has an unusual shape. Across all industries in CBP, each size band is smaller than the one before; in child care there are more establishments with 10 to 19 staff than with 5 to 9, most likely because centers need enough staff to meet child-to-staff ratios. The states with the most establishments are California (9,670), New York (6,702), Texas (6,242), Florida (4,651) and Pennsylvania (3,823).

CBP leaves out the self-employed, which in child care is most of the industry. The Census Bureau's Nonemployer Statistics for 2023 count 533,596 child care businesses with no paid employees (NAICS 62441), with $11.14 billion in total receipts. That's about six businesses without staff for every establishment with staff, averaging about $20,900 in receipts each (our calculation). CBP also excludes most government establishments, so public school pre-K programs aren't counted.

SBA size standards

These are the size standards in the SBA's table effective March 17, 2023, for SBA loans and federal contracts, measured in average annual receipts over the last five completed fiscal years:

Almost every independent daycare is small under $9.5 million. If you bid for a federal child care contract, the contracting officer assigns one code to the solicitation, and that code's standard is the one you must meet.

Where the code gets used, and what a wrong one costs

• Tax returns. The IRS Schedule C list uses 624410, Childcare services, so home providers enter the same code as NAICS.
• Loans, grants and insurance. Lenders, grant programs and insurers use the code to classify your business. Use 624410 everywhere, not a personal services or education code, so every record describes the same business.
• State licensing is separate. Your state license (center, group home or family home) doesn't change the NAICS code; all are 624410.

Finding daycare and preschool providers

Two daycare operators file with the SEC under SIC 8351 (EDGAR list for SIC 8351):

Bright Horizons' 10-K describes a business built on multi-year contracts with employers that offer child care as a benefit, so the buyer for much of its capacity is an employer's HR team, not a parent.

Everyone else is private. The most complete list of names is your state's licensing database, which includes home providers that no business directory has; Childcare.gov, from the federal Office of Child Care, links to each state's resources. For centers, filter by size: the 36,999 establishments with 10 or more employees have a director, an administrator and a budget for software, food service, insurance and supplies. Bebop finds them from a plain-language description and researches each account.

Worked example

Illustrative example. The business and figures are invented to show the method.

Little Acorn Learning (littleacorn.example) runs two centers in Georgia with 34 staff, plus an after-school program at a church hall. Revenue: 80% infant to pre-K care, 15% after-school care, 5% summer day camp.

1. Primary code: 624410. Center care and after-school care run outside a school are both in it.
2. Summer camp: a recreational day camp alone would be 713990, but at 5% of revenue it doesn't change the primary code.
3. Size check for an SBA loan: average annual receipts of $2.6 million over five years, far under $9.5 million.
4. SIC for the lender's form: 8351.

Next step: see the same method for other care businesses on the NAICS code for home health care page.