Luz Gomez, educational technician for the 42nd Force Support Squadron, reads to kids at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., on June 6, 2025. (Darius Hutton/U.S. Air Force)

Child care centers on U.S. military bases continue to grapple with an employee turnover rate as high as 50% after one year, a factor that likely contributes to the long waiting lists for care, according to Rand Corp. research.

The nonprofit think tank released its initial findings last week from a project aimed at helping the Pentagon boost staffing levels for preschool-age care at more than 220 military installations worldwide.

The Pentagon’s Military Community and Family Policy office asked Rand to analyze and identify staffing issues “that appear to influence the long wait list for child care,” said the report. The goal is to help the Pentagon improve the ways it recruits, trains, develops, compensates and retains qualified child care staff, Rand said.

Researchers examined attrition patterns and found that 20% of newly hired providers leave their jobs within three months, while 50% leave after the first year.

Personnel with higher levels of education are more likely to leave, consistent with them having better opportunities in either the civilian early childhood education workforce or in other employment sectors, Rand researchers said.

In contrast, attrition is lower for better-compensated staff, suggesting that higher pay and better benefits can be used as a retention tool, the report said. Having a military spouse raises the likelihood of attrition at the 12-month mark, consistent with an annual cycle of permanent change of station moves, according to the report.

Many child care facilities have been unable to fill the staff positions necessary to operate at full capacity, according to Rand, an issue exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In December 2019, there were 12,400 children on the global military child care wait list. By December 2022, nearly 16,000 children across all priority groups were waiting for care at base facilities worldwide, the report said.

In interviews with staff and military officials, Rand researchers found “the biggest takeaway about pay and benefits … was that pay was insufficient, given the demands and stresses of the work.”

Some cited the availability of making just as much money, if not more, at other entry-level jobs.

“We compete with places because you can come in with a high school diploma, you could also work for Amazon or Target with a lot less rigor and training requirements and oversight and make as much or more money,” an Air Force leader told researchers, according to the report.

Average child development center pay at military installations in the U.S. was a little more than $19 per hour for direct care staff, the Rand report said. There was little variation in this average pay rate across the services, ranging from a low of $18.48 for the Air Force to a high of $19.71 for the Navy.

Overseas, some of those interviewed cited “flex work” as a source of inequity. Flexible employees have work schedules that depend on the needs of the activity to which they are assigned but typically don’t come with benefits such as healthcare, retirement and annual leave.

“Because we’re so understaffed, they work 40 hours and don’t get benefits,” a Marine Corps leader said in the report.

An Army leader told researchers that workers are more often younger and without kids than they were in the past.

“At one time, when I entered the workforce, we went on annual family vacations,” the person was quoted in the report. “But now our staff want to go on vacation all of the time. They aren’t here ... they want to go on girl trips, vacation with friends, and have every holiday off. It is definitely different; the culture has changed.”

Rand researchers suggested that the Pentagon augment its survey of active-duty spouses and also survey reserve components and the civilian workforce about their child care needs, among other suggestions. 

More substantive recommendations will follow in a second report, which will feature results from a new survey of the child development program workforce and case studies from visits to several military installations, researchers said.