Private Households (NAICS 814110): An Investor's Primer

1. Overview

NAICS 814110 — "Private Households" — is one of the most unusual codes in the entire U.S. industry classification system, because the "businesses" in it are families. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) puts a household here when it directly hires and pays a worker to run the home: a nanny, housekeeper, cook, butler, 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, and the "output" is household well-being, not reported business revenue.

Why would an investor care about an "industry" made of households? Two reasons. First, it sits on top of two of the largest structural tailwinds in the U.S. economy — an aging population that wants to grow old at home, and dual-income families that outsource childcare and cleaning. Second, and more practically: 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 money an investor can touch sits one layer out — in the payroll, tax-compliance, marketplace, background-check, insurance, and staffing-agency businesses that monetize these household transactions, and in the agency-based care companies that ride the same demand wave.

• Public-market route (indirect only): payroll processors that run "nanny payroll," care/home-services marketplaces, and the publicly traded agency home-care companies that serve the same aging households (these agencies are technically outside 814110; see Section 4).
• Private-market route: care marketplaces, household-payroll/compliance fintech, nanny-placement and domestic-staffing agencies, family-office service providers, and private-equity roll-ups of home-care franchises.

This primer treats 814110 as a demand pool and money-flow map rather than a stock sector — the honest way to look at it.

2. What it is and how it's structured

In scope. A private household that employs one or more workers "on or about the premises" to operate the home [1]. The classic roles: cooks, maids and housekeepers, nannies and other childcare providers, butlers, laundry workers, gardeners, caretakers, chauffeurs, personal assistants, and non-medical personal-care aides for the elderly or people with disabilities — but only when the household hires them directly [1]. The direct employers can be individuals, families, trusts, estates, or family offices.

What it explicitly excludes. The dividing line is who signs the paycheck. If a company employs the worker and sends them to your home, the activity is classified with that company, not here. Key adjacent codes:

• 624120 — Services for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities: non-medical elder/disability care delivered by an agency (Home Instead, Visiting Angels, Comfort Keepers, etc.) [2].
• 624410 — Child Care Services: daycare centers and organized child-care businesses [3].
• 621610 — Home Health Care Services: medical in-home care (skilled nursing, therapy) by an agency.
• 561720 — Janitorial / residential cleaning companies that employ the cleaners [4]; 561730 — Landscaping Services [5].
• 561311 — Employment Placement Agencies: nanny and domestic-staffing agencies that place (but do not employ) the worker.

That exclusion matters enormously to the numbers: the fast-growing, more "corporate," more investable part of domestic work — agency-employed home-care aides — is counted outside 814110. What's left inside 814110 is the directly-hired, largely informal core.

Ownership mix. There is no ownership mix in the corporate sense — the "owners" are tens of millions of private households acting as micro-employers. It is the most atomized "industry" imaginable: no dominant firm, no franchising, no consolidation within the code itself. All consolidation happens in the service layers around it (Section 8).

3. How big it is

A caveat first, because it is the whole story here. Our ingested federal business statistics contain no figures for this node — Histometrics has no Census County Business Patterns, Economic Census, or SBA metrics for 814110, so none are quoted below. That absence is itself informative. Standard federal business statistics (built from firm payroll records) badly undercount this industry for structural reasons: the "firms" are individual households rather than establishments that file the usual paperwork; a large share of domestic work is paid in cash, off the books; and the Census Bureau's Nonemployer Statistics program explicitly excludes private households [8]. The better gauges come from household surveys and tax research, cited and labeled as such below.

Workforce size (household-survey basis). The U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Women's Bureau counts more than 600,000 workers directly employed by private households, based on 2021 American Community Survey data; about 90% are personal-care aides, maids/housekeepers, or childcare providers [10]. A broader lens — the Economic Policy Institute's (EPI) Domestic Workers Chartbook, using pooled 2019–2021 Current Population Survey (CPS) microdata — counts about 2.2 million domestic workers, but more than half of that total are agency-based home-care aides who belong in 624120/621610, not here [9]. So the ~600,000+ figure is the closer proxy for the true 814110 population, and EPI stresses even the 2.2 million is likely an undercount, because off-the-books pay and the underrepresentation of immigrants in surveys both push the real number higher [9].

The formal (on-the-books) slice. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) — built from unemployment-insurance payroll filings — displayed 190,443 private-household establishments in Q4 2025 [6]. But QCEW coverage is admittedly incomplete: its 2024 coverage table showed roughly 0.4 million domestic workers excluded versus 0.2 million included [7]. Establishments, workers, and households are also three different units of measurement — none maps cleanly to the others.

Who the workers are. About 91.5% are women, and roughly 52.4% are Black, Hispanic, or Asian American / Pacific Islander women; the foreign-born share is well above the national workforce average [9].

Pay and conditions. The median domestic worker earns about $13.79/hour, versus $21.76/hour for other workers [9] — a low figure that reflects the informal, part-time-heavy character of the broad occupation (directly-hired nannies command higher market rates; see Section 5). Domestic workers are roughly three times as likely to live in poverty; fewer than 1 in 5 get health insurance through the job and fewer than 1 in 10 have an employer retirement plan [9].

The informality gap (a proxy for hidden size). IRS research is the clearest window into how much of this "industry" is invisible to official statistics. In tax year 2015, at least 637,000 domestic workers earned more than the "nanny-tax" filing threshold, yet fewer than 191,000 IRS Schedule H (Household Employment Taxes) returns were filed; researcher Brian Erard estimated only about $1.1 billion in household payroll taxes was actually remitted, leaving a $2.4–$4 billion revenue gap and a compliance rate on the order of ~5% of household employers [11]. Read as a market signal: the on-the-books portion an investor could ever monetize (payroll, tax, insurance) is a sliver of total activity — both the opportunity and the ceiling.

4. The investable universe

There is no pure-play public company in 814110 — you cannot own equity in "households as employers." Exposure is entirely indirect: (A) the picks-and-shovels layer that sells payroll, tax, and marketplace services to household employers, and (B) the agency care companies (outside 814110) that serve the same aging households. Tickers and rough scale are provided here per house style; treat category B as adjacent, not in-code.

The closest thing to a pure play is now private. Care.com — the household-employment marketplace that also runs HomePay, a full-service household payroll/tax product built from its 2012 acquisition of Breedlove & Associates — was publicly traded (NYSE: CRCM) until IAC took it private for about $500 million in 2020 [13]. IAC then sold Care.com to private-equity firm Pacific Avenue Capital Partners, a deal that closed in March 2026 (reportedly at a loss) [14][15]. So the single business most directly tied to household employment is, as of now, private and PE-owned — not something a public-market investor can buy today. (IAC no longer carries meaningful exposure after the sale.)

Major private / other "owners." The bulk of activity flows through private companies: care marketplaces (Care.com, Sittercity, UrbanSitter), household-payroll/compliance specialists (HomePay, HomeWork Solutions — an independent specialist tracing to 1993 [33] — Poppins Payroll, GTM Payroll Services, SurePayroll), nanny-placement agencies (thousands of small local firms under NAICS 561311), the household-task marketplace Taskrabbit (owned by IKEA, on an independent-contractor model) [34], and private home-care franchise networks (Home Instead — now owned by Honor Technology; Visiting Angels; Comfort Keepers — owned by Sodexo). Domestic-staffing agencies and family-office service providers remain fragmented and generally do not publish audited financials.

5. How the money works

This is where 814110 breaks the usual mold. In most industries the "owner" is a profit-seeking firm and you analyze its margins. Here the "owner" is a household, and the household is a cost center, not a profit center. Families don't earn a return on a nanny; they buy back time and provide care. So "how the money works" splits into two very different questions.

(a) The household's own economics. The relevant metric is cost of care as a share of household income and time saved, not profit. The household's outflow is: gross wages + employer payroll taxes + insurance + benefits + recruiting and administrative cost. A full-time nanny runs roughly $21–$22/hour nationally — about $45,000–$55,000/year before taxes [26]. For infant care specifically, a nanny costs about $766/week versus a daycare center at about $321/week [25]. On average, parents spend about 24% of household income on childcare — more than three times the 7% the DOL considers "affordable" [25]. Families choose a directly-hired worker over an agency or a center when they value flexibility, one-on-one attention, or in-home elder care enough to pay the premium — and to take on the paperwork of being an employer.

(b) The picks-and-shovels businesses that monetize the transaction. This is where the actual revenue and margins live — and what an investor is really underwriting:

• Marketplaces (e.g., Care.com, Sittercity): subscription/membership fees paid by families to find and vet workers; two-sided networks with millions of caregiver profiles.
• Placement agencies: one-time fees for sourcing/vetting a nanny or estate staff — commonly 10–20% of the worker's first-year salary, or a flat placement fee.
• Household payroll & tax SaaS (e.g., HomePay, HomeWork Solutions, Poppins, SurePayroll): recurring monthly fees (roughly $50–$100/month) to run payroll, file Schedule H and state returns, and keep the family compliant.
• Ancillary: background checks, workers'-compensation and household-employment-practices insurance, and time-tracking tools.

This layer has classic recurring-revenue SaaS/marketplace economics — low marginal cost, high retention once a family is set up — layered on a demand pool that is enormous but only partly formalized. The useful operating metrics are household-employer adoption, payroll accounts, revenue per active household, placement fill rates, worker retention, repeat bookings, customer-acquisition cost, and contribution margin — not manufacturing/retail measures like capacity utilization or same-store sales. The binding constraint on growth is the ~5% tax-compliance rate (Section 3): most household employment never enters the paid-service funnel at all.

6. What drives demand

• The aging wave ("age in place"). The 2024 American Community Survey estimated 61.2 million Americans aged 65 or older [21], and a record 4.1 million Americans turned 65 in 2024 — about 11,200 a day — with the 65-and-over population projected to exceed 80 million (more than 20% of the country) around 2050 [22]. Most want to stay in their own homes, driving demand for in-home elder care (both directly-hired aides and agencies). BLS projects employment of home health and personal care aides to grow 17% from 2024 to 2034, far faster than average [23].
• Dual-income families and female labor-force participation. With both parents working, childcare and household management get outsourced; rising daycare costs and center shortages push some families toward directly-hired nannies.
• Cost and scarcity of institutional alternatives. When center-based daycare or nursing facilities are unavailable, waitlisted, or costlier full-time, in-home hires fill the gap.
• Household wealth at the top. Housekeepers, estate managers, private chefs, and personal staff track high-income and high-net-worth household formation.
• Labor supply — immigration. A large share of the workforce is foreign-born [9], so immigration policy directly governs the supply (and therefore the wage) of domestic labor.

Childcare is the mixed signal. BLS projects childcare-worker employment to decline 3% from 2024 to 2034 on slowing birth rates and affordability pressure — though with substantial replacement demand. Private households employed 18% of childcare workers in 2024 [24].

7. Regulation

For an "industry" of families, the regulatory load is surprisingly heavy — and it has been tightening:

• Federal wage-and-hour (FLSA). The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) covers most domestic service: at least the federal minimum wage and overtime after 40 hours per week, with narrow exceptions for casual babysitters, certain companionship workers, and live-in employees [17]. The federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour (unchanged since July 24, 2009); state and local laws may require more [18]. A 2013 DOL final rule (effective 2015) narrowed the "companionship services" exemption and, critically, barred third-party agencies from claiming it — extending minimum-wage and overtime protection to most agency home-care workers [16].
• The "nanny tax" (IRS Schedule H). A household that pays a single worker cash wages at or above a threshold — $2,700 (2024), $2,800 (2025), $3,000 (2026) — must withhold and pay Social Security/Medicare under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), a combined 15.3% rate split between employer and employee. Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) obligations generally begin at $1,000 of household wages in a calendar quarter. The employer may also need an Employer Identification Number (EIN), Form I-9 work authorization, Form W-2, and Schedule H — and the worker must be a W-2 employee; issuing a 1099 (independent contractor) is generally improper for a nanny or housekeeper [12].
• State Domestic Workers Bill of Rights laws. A growing set of states — New York (2010), California (2013), Hawaii (2013), Massachusetts (2014), plus Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey (2022), Virginia, and Rhode Island (2024) — and the city of Seattle grant explicit protections such as overtime, rest days/breaks, and anti-harassment coverage [19][20].
• Workers' compensation, paid leave, wage notices, and I-9 verification apply at the household-employer level in many states — the compliance burden the payroll-service layer exists to absorb.

For investors, compliance is both a cost and a product opportunity: payroll automation, worker classification, insurance, documentation, and background checks can support recurring revenue, while violations create penalties, litigation, and reputational damage (the recurring "Nannygate" political scandals).

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

Within 814110 there is no competition to speak of — households don't compete, and a family gets no operating leverage from employing a small staff. All the competitive action is in the surrounding service layers, which compete across substitutes: direct hiring, staffing agencies, childcare centers and home-care agencies, online marketplaces, gig platforms, and payroll/compliance software.

• Marketplaces consolidated around a few brands. Care.com rolled up household-payroll capability by buying Breedlove & Associates (now HomePay) in 2012, then itself changed hands twice (public → IAC in 2020 → Pacific Avenue in 2026) [13][14][15]; Bright Horizons owns Sittercity [29]; IKEA owns Taskrabbit [34].
• Payroll/tax is consolidating into a few specialists (SurePayroll/Paychex, HomeWork Solutions, GTM, Poppins, HomePay) competing on price and hands-off compliance.
• Agency home care is franchising and rolling up (Honor's 2021 acquisition of Home Instead created a national platform; PE-backed roll-ups continue across ADUS, BTSG, and peers) — capturing demand that might otherwise go to directly-hired workers.
• Advocacy and policy (the National Domestic Workers Alliance) push formalization state by state, shifting activity from the informal core into the taxed, insured, investable layer.

Network effects here are local and fragile — a single safety or service failure can destroy trust fast — so the most defensible businesses combine trusted brands, worker supply, compliance infrastructure, recurring workflows, and repeat demand. The through-line: the long-run competitive story is formalization — every share point that moves from cash-in-hand to an agency or a payroll platform becomes monetizable and measurable.

9. Risks

• Structural informality / measurement risk. With ~95% of household employers not fully tax-compliant [11] and federal business datasets that omit or incompletely cover the industry [7][8], most demand never reaches a paid, investable service. Growth of the picks-and-shovels layer depends on converting the informal market — a slow grind.
• Immigration policy is a supply shock. Because so much of the workforce is foreign-born [9], enforcement or restriction can sharply cut labor supply, raise wages, and shrink the market; liberalization does the reverse.
• Regulatory and litigation exposure. Expanding state bills of rights, wage-and-hour claims, and worker-misclassification (1099-vs-W-2) liability raise the cost and complexity of being a household employer — creating both demand for compliance services and headline/reputational risk.
• Affordability and cyclicality. Directly-hired cleaning and childcare are discretionary and get cut in downturns (families shift to centers, agencies, relatives, or informal care); elder care is more defensive but still exposed to family budgets — and, on the agency side, to public reimbursement policy.
• Safety, worker vulnerability, and data. Low pay, weak benefits, and isolation create ethical and reputational risk; screening failures, abuse allegations, fraud, and privacy/data breaches can quickly destroy platform trust.
• Healthcare-adjacency risk. The publicly traded home-care proxies face Medicaid reimbursement changes, payer concentration, licensing, and labor-cost pressure — dynamics that have little to do with 814110 itself.
• Investment-structure / liquidity risk. Public companies offer only partial, indirect exposure; the most on-target business (Care.com) is now privately PE-held [14], and private operators carry founder dependence, limited disclosure, and illiquidity.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes (all indirect). Measure direct exposure before buying a "household-services theme" at face value — review segment disclosures, recurring revenue, worker supply, wage pass-through, retention, platform trust, regulatory exposure, and balance-sheet risk.

• Payroll processors — Paychex (PAYX, via SurePayroll) and ADP (ADP) capture household-payroll fees inside much larger franchises; the exposure is real but small.
• Care marketplaces / benefits — Bright Horizons (BFAM, owns Sittercity) and Angi (ANGI, home-services marketplace) touch the demand pool, though both skew to corporate benefits or independent contractors rather than household employees.
• Agency care companies — Addus (ADUS), BrightSpring (BTSG), Pennant (PNTG), Aveanna (AVAH) give liquid exposure to the same aging-population demand, but sit in adjacent NAICS codes (624120/621610) and carry their own reimbursement and labor-cost dynamics. (Reserve valuation multiples, yields, and price targets for your own diligence.)
• Watch item: whether Care.com re-emerges publicly (a future re-IPO or resale) — the closest thing to a listed pure play.

Private-market routes. Venture/growth equity in care marketplaces and household-payroll/compliance fintech (the formalization thesis); PE roll-ups of home-care franchises and regional agencies; and direct ownership of nanny-placement / domestic-staffing agencies (NAICS 561311), a fragmented, cash-generative small-business niche. Diligence should center on worker retention, fill rates, churn, classification practices, background screening, insurance, state licenses, customer concentration, cash conversion, and owner dependence.

Outlook — reported facts. BLS expects strong growth in home health and personal care aides (+17%, 2024–2034), while childcare-worker employment is projected to decline modestly (-3%) on affordability and demographic pressures [23][24].

Outlook — judgment. The demand backdrop is about as durable as any in the economy: the aging wave and dual-income family formation both point up for decades. But the industry itself is likely to remain atomized, informal, low-wage for workers, and largely non-investable in its raw form. The realistic thesis is not "buy the households" — it's "buy the formalization": the payroll, tax, marketplace, insurance, and agency layers that convert an enormous but hidden cash economy into measurable, recurring revenue. Aging-related care is the strongest structural pocket; discretionary housekeeping and household management stay the most income-sensitive. Progress on formalization is gated by three variables to watch — tax-compliance behavior, immigration-driven labor supply, and state-by-state regulation.

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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. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS: 624120 Services for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=624120&input=624120&year=2022
3. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS: 624410 Child Care Services." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=624410&input=624410&year=2022
4. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS: 561720 Janitorial Services." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=561720&input=561720&year=2022
5. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS: 561730 Landscaping Services." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=561730&input=561730&year=2022
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