We wanted to know how close that prediction was to coming true almost a year later, so LAist requested the number of permanent and temporary closures, broken down by county, from the agency that licenses child care, the California Department of Social Services.
As of Jan. 25, 3,122 California child care providers had reported permanent shutdowns.
Child care has been a precarious business in recent years. L.A. County and the state as a whole have consistently lost child care slots since 2014. So far, the number of permanent closures between March of 2020 and January 2021 hasn t exceeded the number of closures from the previous year.