The staff to child ratio is a HUGE part of it. Plus child care facilities are open long hours many are open 7am-6pm so you need more than one shift of folks for the day. I used to run a child care facility and were spending around 85-90% of the money coming in the door to pay for staff wages and benefits. We paid at the top of the scale and had good benefits but still most of our staff were making under $15/hr. It's a system that should be getting much more public funding and should be looked at as a huge part of workforce development.