Nannies, caregivers, house cleaners and other domestic workers earn a median wage of about $10 per hour, generally get no benefits and often are not treated very well.
These are the key findings from Home Economics, a study from the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Also interesting is the size of the domestic worker industry. According to the study there are about 800,000 domestic workers who are paid directly by the households they work for. The study did not include domestic workers employed through companies or outside agencies.
As Salon's article on the study - Fighting Our New Nanny Economy - points out, domestic workers are not covered by a lot of our labor laws. For example, they are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and in most states minimum wage laws.
We've written a lot about the rise of personal services, which includes domestic workers. A few are doing quite well. Some high-end nannies and butlers earn more than $200k per year and have lavish benefits.
But as this study points out, most do not do well. Since this is a growing field we're going to need to figure out how to make these jobs better.
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