How Remote Work Is Redrawing the Preschool Map

Remote and hybrid work didn’t just change where people log in from. It changed where they choose to live, and that shift is quietly reshaping where preschool demand is highest. For anyone evaluating a Creative World School franchise territory, the map of where families are moving matters as much as the map of where they already live.

Growth Is Happening on the Outer Edge

U.S. Census Bureau data on 2025 metro growth found that expansion farther from the center of metro areas was the dominant pattern nationally, not the exception. Dallas-Fort Worth is the clearest example: five outer-ring cities more than doubled in population over five years, and Celina, Texas, nearly quadrupled to become the nation’s fastest-growing city, while Dallas itself grew just 1.9 percent. Fort Worth grew 11.9 percent. The pattern repeats in metro after metro. Growth is concentrated where new housing is being built, not in the urban core.

Domestic Migration Is Doing the Heavy Lifting

Dallas alone gained roughly 270,000 residents through net domestic migration between 2020 and 2025, nearly 40 percent more than any other metro area. That’s not commuters shifting neighborhoods. That’s families relocating from other states, often explicitly because a remote or hybrid job freed them from living near a specific office. Housing availability and job growth are the two forces the Census Bureau points to as driving where those families land.

New Growth Areas Are Often Underserved

Nationally, 46 percent of children age five and under already live in a licensed child care desert, according to the Center for American Progress. That number is a lagging indicator. It reflects supply built for where families used to live, not where they’re moving now. A fast-growing outer-ring suburb with new subdivisions and young families rarely has licensed preschool capacity keeping pace with rooftops, which is exactly the gap a new franchise territory is built to fill.

What This Means for Site Selection

The old rule of thumb, follow the rooftops, still applies, but the rooftops themselves have moved. Franchise candidates evaluating a territory should weigh recent net migration and new housing permits as heavily as current population figures. A market that looks modest today but is absorbing meaningful domestic in-migration is often a stronger long-term bet than an already-dense metro core with limited room to grow.

Creative World School works with new owners to evaluate exactly these kinds of shifting demand signals before committing to a territory. If you’re exploring where the next wave of preschool demand is headed, connect with our franchise development team to talk through what the map looks like in your target market.