Childcare Centers & Preschools: How to Calculate Your Payroll Costs (2026)

Managed payroll by headcount for a childcare center

10 employees: $450 a month, $5,400 a year; 25 employees: $1,125 a month, $13,500 a year; 50 employees: $2,250 a month, $27,000 a year; 100 employees: $4,500 a month, $54,000 a year. Every row is $45 per employee per month, all-inclusive, inside the payroll software you already use, with no monthly minimum, so the per-employee cost is the same at 10 as at 100. Nothing in the childcare center setup, licensing-tied payroll records, subsidy payment coordination, part-time variable-hour staff and teacher certification pay, is billed as an add-on.

The employer-side tax that rides on every childcare center wage

At the May 2025 national median for childcare workers, $34,980 a year or about $17 an hour, the employer share of Social Security and Medicare is $2,676 per employee per year and FUTA is $42 after the state credit, before state unemployment at the assigned rate. Those costs are the same whoever runs payroll; the calculator question is only who does the work and who carries the error.

Parents who claim the child and dependent care credit or receive benefits under an employer dependent care plan use Form W-10 to obtain the care provider's correct name, address and taxpayer identification number, so a center must be able to furnish its TIN to families.

The in-house line in the calculation

BLS OEWS May 2025: payroll and timekeeping clerks, national median $58,260, mean $59,630. Add roughly 30 percent for benefits and employer taxes, about $75,738, before the software that person runs, and set it against the headcount rows above. Managed payroll stays under that loaded figure until about 140 employees.