A better model is "The daycare was supply-constrained and never expanded at the same rate as Google's employee base, so it ended up having little influence on t

A better model is "The daycare was supply-constrained and never expanded at the same rate as Google's employee base, so it ended up having little influence on the overall population." That resolves the contradiction while still being an accurate representation of reality. It's the same phenomena as the housing market or California's population today. Both are super expensive and not growing. The reason they are super expensive is that they are not growing, while the pool of potential buyers is.