Ongoing labour shortages continue to plague industries across state, but a diminished workforce has been identified as the major factor behind massive childcare waitlists in rural areas.
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President of the Australian Childcare Alliance Queensland Majella Fitzsimmons said a lack of staff and educators was the biggest cause behind the extensive waitlists.
"Waitlists are higher than normal in every area because we are having a shortage of workers and educators," she said.
"I think we need to get the workforce issue down first and foremost, make sure people are attracted to the sector.
"Everyone's finding the same thing, except we're in an industry that is regulated by ratios, and we don't want to reduce ratios because that reduces the quality of care and safety of our children.
"Because we're licensed under legislation, we can only have so many children per educator, so if we don't have the educators, we can't have the children.
"It's worse in rural and remote areas because you've got a smaller population to target when getting workers into early childhood. I think it's really exacerbated in small communities."
An obvious flow on effect of huge waitlists is parents not being able to re-enter the workforce, which Ms Fitzsimmons said was feeding the cycle of labor shortages.
She said wage rises and subsidies were being discussed at a federal level to address the shortages, in the hopes of attracting more staff for centres.
"We've gone to the federal government and said we need some sort of wage subsidy because the wage has to be risen to attract more educators, however, it can't be passed onto families," she said.
"We don't we don't want to be making families pay any more than what they are already.
"Imagine if more adults can go to work, because we've got enough educators in enough places for their children, imagine what our economy would be like. I think that's the pie in the sky dream."
Ms Fitzsimmons said that educators and industry professionals would meet in Brisbane on Thursday for a forum with the State Government and Department of Education to discuss workforce issues.
The north-west town of Cloncurry is one community buckling under the increased demand, with council reporting that, as of October 5, only 12 children had confirmed places at the council-run Curry Kids Early Learning Centre, while a further 26 remained on the waitlist.
Cloncurry Shire Council Mayor Greg Campbell said the waitlists displayed positive community growth in the long term, however the issue needed to be addressed to ensure services could cater for the increasing population.
"There's definitely a wait list and I think that it's not a good thing short term, but long term, it can be seen as a positive indicator that the town's growing and demand is growing for the services," he said.
"We've got more families in town and people wanting to get back into the workforce so we've just got to make sure that we're keeping up with that growth, and with the successful announcement of some fairly significant funding, we're on track to do that."
Mayor Campbell said council had secured almost $4.4 million in funding from the resource community infrastructure fund to build a new daycare centre in Cloncurry, which is almost double the size of the current centre.
The next challenge for the Cloncurry community will be finding staff to run the new facility, which Mr Campbell says they hope to do through more traineeships and workforce recruitment.
"We're looking at more traineeships, so we can get some of our young people in school-based apprenticeships and hopefully get enough of them and staying on and growing the workforce."
