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Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

IndustryNAICS 81411Other Services (except Public Administration)

Private Households (NAICS 81411): An Investor's Primer

1. Overview

NAICS 81411 — "Private Households" — is a NAICS industry (the five-digit level) in the U.S. classification system, and it is one of the strangest corners of that system because the "businesses" in it are families. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) files a household here when it directly hires and pays a worker to run the home — a nanny, housekeeper, cook, gardener, caretaker, personal driver, or a non-medical caregiver for an elderly or disabled family member [1]. The household is the legal employer; the domestic worker is its employee; the "output" is household well-being, not reported business revenue.

For an investor, the practical point is that you cannot buy a share of this industry directly — there is no public company whose core business is "being a household that employs a nanny." The investable money sits one layer out, in the payroll, tax-compliance, marketplace, background-check, insurance, and staffing-agency businesses that monetize these household transactions, plus the agency-based care companies that ride the same demand wave. This page is a short rollup: 81411 is effectively identical to its single child industry, so it summarizes this level and points you to the full detail.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS 81411 contains exactly one child, the six-digit U.S. industry 814110 — Private Households. At the five-digit level the definition is the same as at six digits: a private household that employs one or more workers "on or about the premises" to operate the home [1]. Because there is a single child, 81411 is a pass-through — the five-digit rollup and the six-digit leaf describe the same thing, cover the same in-scope activity, and carry the same figures. There is nothing at this level that the child does not already contain.

  • In scope: cooks, maids/housekeepers, nannies and childcare providers, butlers, laundry workers, gardeners, caretakers, chauffeurs, personal assistants, and non-medical personal-care aides — but only when the household hires them directly [1].
  • Out of scope (the dividing line is who signs the paycheck): agency-employed non-medical elder/disability care (624120), daycare centers (624410), medical home health (621610), residential-cleaning and landscaping companies (561720/561730), and nanny/domestic staffing placement agencies (561311).

For everything below the summary level — the full investable universe, money mechanics, regulation, and risks — see the 814110 primer. This page does not duplicate it.

3. How big it is (this level's rollup figures)

Because 81411 has one child, its size equals 814110's, and the same measurement warning applies at both levels.

A caveat that is the whole story. Our ingested federal business statistics contain no figures for NAICS 81411 — Histometrics holds no Census County Business Patterns, Economic Census, or SBA metrics for this node, so none are quoted as ground truth here. That absence is itself informative: standard federal business statistics (built from firm payroll records) badly undercount this industry because the "firms" are individual households, much domestic work is paid in cash off the books, and the Census Bureau's Nonemployer Statistics program explicitly excludes private households [4]. The better gauges come from household surveys and tax research, labeled as such:

  • Workforce (household-survey basis): the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Women's Bureau counts more than 600,000 workers directly employed by private households (2021 American Community Survey basis); about 90% are personal-care aides, maids/housekeepers, or childcare providers [5]. A broader lens — the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) — counts ~2.2 million domestic workers, but more than half are agency-based aides who fall outside this industry, and EPI stresses even that total is an undercount [6].
  • Formal (on-the-books) slice: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) showed 190,443 private-household establishments in Q4 2025 [2], while noting its own coverage is incomplete [3].
  • The informality gap: in tax year 2015 at least 637,000 domestic workers earned above the "nanny-tax" filing threshold, yet fewer than 191,000 IRS Schedule H returns were filed — a compliance rate on the order of ~5% of household employers [7].

Undercount caveat: because tiny, individual household ownership dominates and cash pay is common, every count above should be read as a floor, not a ceiling. The on-the-books portion an investor could ever monetize is a sliver of true activity.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With one child, all of the industry's investable value maps straight through to 814110's map. There is no pure-play public company in 81411; exposure is entirely indirect and concentrates in two places:

  • Picks-and-shovels layer — payroll/tax processors that run "nanny payroll" (Paychex via SurePayroll; ADP), care/home-services marketplaces (Bright Horizons, which owns Sittercity; Angi), and private household-payroll/compliance specialists (HomePay, HomeWork Solutions, Poppins, GTM).
  • Agency care companies (adjacent, outside this code) — publicly traded home-care names (Addus, BrightSpring, Pennant, Aveanna) that serve the same aging households under NAICS 624120/621610.

The closest thing to a pure play — Care.com (with its HomePay household-payroll product) — is now private and private-equity-owned after IAC took it private in 2020 and sold it to Pacific Avenue Capital Partners in a deal closing March 2026 [7]. Tickers, scale, and the full company table live in the 814110 primer, Section 4.

5. How the money works

Same mechanics as the child, in one paragraph: the household is a cost center, not a profit center — families buy back time and provide care rather than earn a return, so the relevant household metric is cost of care as a share of income and time saved. The actual revenue and margins live in the surrounding service layers: marketplace subscriptions, placement fees (commonly 10–20% of first-year salary), and recurring household-payroll/tax SaaS (roughly $50–$100/month), plus background checks and insurance. These are classic recurring-revenue marketplace/SaaS economics sitting on an enormous but only partly formalized demand pool. See 814110, Section 5 for detail.

6. Demand drivers

Identical to the child, and among the most durable in the economy:

  • The aging wave ("age in place") — the 2024 American Community Survey estimated 61.2 million Americans aged 65+ [8]; BLS projects home health and personal care aide employment to grow 17% from 2024 to 2034 [9].
  • Dual-income families outsourcing childcare and household management.
  • Cost/scarcity of institutional alternatives (daycare shortages, nursing-facility waitlists).
  • High-net-worth household formation (estate managers, private chefs, personal staff).
  • Immigration policy, which governs the supply — and therefore the wage — of a heavily foreign-born workforce [6].

Childcare is the mixed signal: BLS projects childcare-worker employment to decline 3% over 2024–2034 on birth-rate and affordability pressure.

7. Regulation

The regulatory load falls at the same place for both levels — on the household as employer — and it has been tightening. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets minimum wage and overtime for most domestic service; the IRS "nanny tax" (Schedule H) requires Social Security/Medicare withholding once cash wages cross a threshold ($2,800 in 2025, $3,000 in 2026) under a combined 15.3% FICA rate; and a growing set of state Domestic Workers Bill of Rights laws add overtime, rest, and anti-harassment protections. For investors, compliance is both a cost and a product opportunity — the reason the payroll/insurance layer exists. Full statutory detail is in 814110, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

There is no consolidation within 81411 — households don't compete or combine. All the action is in the service layers around it: marketplaces have consolidated around a few brands (Care.com bought Breedlove/HomePay; Bright Horizons owns Sittercity; IKEA owns Taskrabbit), household payroll/tax is consolidating into a handful of specialists, and agency home care continues to franchise and roll up under private-equity ownership. The long-run through-line is formalization — every share point that moves from cash-in-hand into an agency or a payroll platform becomes monetizable. See 814110, Section 8.

9. Risks

The child's risk set applies unchanged: structural informality/measurement risk (~95% of household employers not fully tax-compliant, and federal business data that omits the industry); immigration policy as a supply shock; regulatory and litigation exposure (expanding state bills of rights, 1099-vs-W-2 misclassification); affordability and cyclicality in discretionary housekeeping and childcare; safety/trust and data risk on any platform; healthcare-adjacency risk (Medicaid reimbursement) for the public home-care proxies; and investment-structure/liquidity risk — the most on-target business (Care.com) is now privately held.

10. How to invest & outlook

Because this level equals its one child, the playbook is the same. Public-market exposure is indirect only: payroll processors (Paychex, ADP), care marketplaces/benefits (Bright Horizons, Angi), and adjacent agency-care names (Addus, BrightSpring, Pennant, Aveanna) — measure direct exposure before buying a "household-services theme," and reserve valuation multiples, yields, and price targets for your own diligence. Private-market exposure runs through care marketplaces and household-payroll/compliance fintech (the formalization thesis), PE roll-ups of home-care franchises, and directly owned nanny-placement/domestic-staffing agencies (NAICS 561311).

Outlook — reported facts: BLS expects strong growth in home health and personal care aides (+17%, 2024–2034) and a modest decline in childcare workers (-3%) [9]. Outlook — judgment: the demand backdrop (aging plus dual-income family formation) is about as durable as any in the economy, but the industry itself stays atomized, informal, and largely non-investable in its raw form. The realistic thesis is not "buy the households" — it's "buy the formalization." For the complete analysis, company table, and citations, read the 814110 primer.

Sources

  1. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS: 814110 Private Households." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=814110&input=814110&year=2022
  2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Industry at a Glance: Private Households, NAICS 814" (QCEW establishments, Q4 2025). https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag814.htm
  3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employment and Wages, Annual Averages 2024" (QCEW coverage exclusions), 2025. https://www.bls.gov/cew/publications/employment-and-wages-annual-averages/2024/home.htm
  4. U.S. Census Bureau, "Nonemployer Statistics Frequently Asked Questions" (private households excluded), 2025. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics/about/faq.html
  5. U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, "Domestic Workers in the United States" (fact sheet, 2021 ACS basis), 2024. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WB/Files/DomesticWorkersFactSheet.pdf
  6. Economic Policy Institute, "Domestic Workers Chartbook 2022" (pooled 2019–2021 CPS microdata), 2022. https://www.epi.org/publication/domestic-workers-chartbook-2022/
  7. Brian Erard, "Who Is Minding the Nanny Tax?" IRS–Tax Policy Center Research Conference, 2018. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/18resconerard.pdf
  8. U.S. Census Bureau, "S0103: Population 65 Years and Over in the United States," 2024 ACS 1-Year Estimates. https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2024.S0103
  9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Occupational Outlook Handbook: Home Health and Personal Care Aides," 2025. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home-health-aides-and-personal-care-aides.htm