The Workforce that Every Other Workforce Relies On

Child care providers are small businesses that are crucial to building Oregon’s economy.

TILLAMOOK, Ore. – The grass-green two-story with ivory trim is not merely the prettiest house on its street in this rural North Coast community. As the home of Happy Tots Childcare, it is also a crucial building block in the region’s economic infrastructure.

Inside, business owner Brenda Barajas opens her door to families at 7 a.m., five days a week. For up to ten hours a day, she watches over her community’s youngest members during some of their most consequential years: feeding, toilet training, teaching, playing and loving them.

After more than 10 years as an employee of other child care operations, Barajas opened Happy Tots in 2025 with business assistance from the Oregon Child Care Alliance (OCCA), a program of Portland-based Neighborhood House that receives support from Oregon Community Foundation.

“I have had an amazing experience with the kids I take care of,” says Barajas, 34. “I feel like I’m blessed by having my own business.”

Women like Barajas who own and operate in-home child care businesses provide almost 30 percent of Oregon's available child care slots. Their unseen, low-paid labor helps shape the healthy development and future success of the children they care for. They also quietly power local economies and enable other businesses to thrive and grow.

Because of child care providers, tens of thousands of parents throughout Oregon can go to work to support their families, allow their employers to operate and earn profits, and help their communities thrive.

Society “often treats child care providers and business owners as informal caregivers, and they're not,” says Ruby Ramirez, Senior Program Officer for Early Childhood Programs at Oregon Community Foundation.

“These are businesses like any other business, and they're critical to the entire workforce. This is the workforce that allows every other workforce to go to work.” 

Meeting a critical need

On a recent Monday, Barajas’ first arrival is a little girl in pink-and-green rain boots who sometimes cries when her parents leave. Barajas moves quickly to distract her, exclaiming over her boots and a picture the girl drew over the weekend.

“Ohhhh, I love your strawberry shoes ... is this for me? I love it. I’m making pancakes. Want to help me, honey?” 

The parents slip away in a rush of I Love Yous and Bye Byes – Mom to an accounting job, Dad to his work repairing tractor equipment. In the kitchen, Barajas lifts her charge into a highchair and plies her with freshly sliced strawberries and a warm pancake straight off the stove.

Happy Tots is state-licensed to enroll up to ten children; Barajas currently cares for seven over the course of a week. This morning, two preschoolers will join the toddler. The older ones call Barajas “teacher.” The little one calls her “Mom.” 

After pancakes, Barajas reads to them in the living room. Later in the week, the public library bookmobile will stop by with new titles. For now, the group heads out to Barajas’ large, neatly mowed backyard for fresh air and games. Towering log piles at the nearby lumber yard are visible in the distance, heaps of reddish-brown against the pale blue sky.

It is a sweet small-town Oregon scene, punctuated by the kids’ lilting chatter. It is also a growing business that the state needs many more of.

Oregon, like the nation as a whole, does not have nearly enough child care slots for all the families who need them. Statewide, only 33 percent of children age 5 and under have potential access to a regulated child care slot, according to an 2025 Oregon State University study. 

Without access to child care, parents can't work, which prevents them and their families from advancing and hurts employers who can’t hire the workers they need. More than 40% of Oregon caregivers with children aged 1 to 5 reported that someone in their family had to quit a job, refuse a job, or change jobs due to child care issues, according to a 2022 survey.

The entire state pays the price. ReadyNation, a business-led advocacy group, estimated in 2023 that Oregon’s child care gap costs the state $1.4 billion a year in lost earnings for families, lost productivity and growth for businesses, and lost revenue for the state.

Support for small business owners

In Tillamook County, where Barajas lives, only 8% of infants and toddlers, and 30% of preschoolers, have access to child care. The county is served by 24 providers, a mix of centers and in-home operations. Up until two years ago, Barajas was an employee in one of them.

Then shoulder surgery forced her to take time off, and her boss filled her position. As she pondered her next step, her husband, a manager at Tillamook Country Smoker, asked her a pivotal question over dinner one night:

“He said, ‘you have all the training and all the abilities. Why don’t you just start your own business here?’” Barajas recalls.

The first challenge was preparing the home they share with their three school-age sons to pass a state inspection. Out went the wood-burning stove; in went child-proof drawers and a toddler-size stool for the bathroom sink. 

Barajas joined a free course for child care businesses offered by OCCA, which gives her access to software that helps her advertise her services, communicate with parents and collect payments. OCCA launched in 2020, with funding from the OCF and The Ford Family Foundation. The program supports providers and connects them to resources through a network of business coaches housed in regional child care resource and referral agencies.
 
With OCCA, two local agencies also provide essential training and support to Barajas and other child care business owners in the area: Northwest Regional Child Care Resource and Referral and the Clatsop Small Business Development Center. They work with providers to start, stabilize and strengthen their businesses – so they can meet the needs of other families while also supporting their own.

The funding issues at the heart of Oregon’s child care crisis make that easier said than done.

“At its core, the biggest contributing factor to a lack of accessible child care in Oregon, and frankly, the entire country, is basic math. Child care is a market failure. It's expensive for families and unsustainable for providers. They have extremely low profit margins, and it's a difficult business to keep up and running,” explained OCF’s Ramirez.

Some low-income Oregon families receive government assistance that covers part of the cost, but insufficient funding means 9,700 more are stuck on a waitlist. Among families who receive subsidies, many can't afford to cover the gap between the state payments and the rates that providers need to charge. 

Child care business owners often respond by underpaying themselves. The median annual salary of Oregon child care providers, including home-based business owners, is $36,250, according to federal data. When owners can’t cover their own bills or earn enough to move their own families ahead, they close. The volatility reduces options for working parents and destabilizes an already fragile system of care.

"I tell [providers] that their service to the community is important,” says Julia Smith, a Tillamook-based business coach for Northwest Regional Child Care Resource and Referral, who advises providers enrolled in the OCCA program. “But it has to serve them monetarily, as well.”

‘I am where I want to be.’

A year after opening Happy Tots, Barajas says she mostly breaks even each month, covering expenses that include rising grocery bills. But she hasn’t been able to save any money that could bolster her business, cover her health insurance, or help her save for retirement. 

“For me, I am not in it for the profit,” Barajas says. “I am here to give the kids a better future and make sure that they have healthy meals and learn as much as they can.”

She focuses on the upsides: Her autonomy to run things her way, like her emphasis on active, play-based learning over rote seatwork, and serving fresh fruits and vegetables. The trust she’s built with families. The pride she feels as the children learn and grow.

"It’s been nice to see how much the parents appreciate what I do. They’ll say, ‘Oh, she knows her colors or, look, he knows this new word,’” Barajas says. “They’re paying attention to what I’m teaching their kids, and all the hard work and dedication that I put in every day." 

Soon, Barajas will be able to meet the needs of even more Tillamook parents.
 
Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency, recently awarded her a $100,000 child care infrastructure grant that will allow her to renovate her garage and expand her enrollment to up to 16 children.

She'll finally be able to move her business out of her family’s living space: No more art supplies and diapers stacked in the bedroom; no more quieting her sons when they arrive home from school during the little ones’ naptime. She can hire an employee and take in more infants – the most urgently needed care in Tillamook and any community.

From age 12, when Barajas began babysitting her six-week-old niece, she knew she wanted to work with kids as a career. 

“I had in mind that one day, if I had a business of my own, that was the one I wanted,” Barajas says. “It's an achievement of my own that I can look back and say, ‘I did it. I made it. I am where I want to be.’” 

What you can do:

• Learn more about OCF investments in the Oregon Child Care Alliance or donate to OCF's Child Care Shared Services Fund.
• If you have a donor advised fund and would like to support OCF’s efforts to strengthen child care in Oregon, please contact your donor relations officer.
• If you’re new to OCF, our philanthropic advisors can help you make the most of your giving.