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Hiring a nanny in California means you are a household employer under state and federal law the moment your nanny's first day begins. California has specific rules that apply directly to your situation, including overtime thresholds under the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, a mandatory workers' compensation requirement, and a 2026 law requiring you to provide your nanny with a written notice of their rights every year. None of this is as complicated as it sounds. This post walks through what each obligation actually means, in plain language, so you can go into the hiring process informed and confident rather than scrambling to catch up after the fact.

Here is the thing nobody tells you before you start searching. The moment you hire a nanny, direct their schedule, and bring them into your home on a regular basis, California considers you an employer. Not informally. Legally.

Most Bay Area families are focused on the person they are hiring, the fit, the trust, the way their kids will respond, and so much more. That should be all that matters. But the employer piece tends to arrive later in the hiring process, and California made it official in 2020 when AB5 passed, changing the nanny industry and closing the door on calling your nanny a babysitter and paying them cash at the end of each shift. AB5 put a stop to classifying nannies as independent contractors and formally recognized nannying as a professional employee role. It was a shift that was good for the industry, good for nannies, and worth understanding as a family on the hiring side.

Practically, it means that the person caring for your children is your employee under California law. The California Employment Development Department is direct about this. It does not matter whether your nanny works five hours a week or fifty. If you are directing their work, you are their employer.

Once you understand that, everything else in this post makes sense. The overtime rules, the insurance requirement, the new 2026 notice, all of it exists because you are running a household with an employee in it. The good news is that once it is set up correctly, it runs quietly in the background and you stop thinking about it entirely.

The good news is that California household employment law is not one giant unknown. It breaks down into a handful of specific areas, each with its own rules, and most of them are more manageable than they sound from the outside. What follows is a plain-language walkthrough of each one, starting with the question that shapes almost everything else about how your nanny is paid.

Not every nanny is classified the same way under California law, and understanding which classification applies to your nanny is one of the most important things you can do before a hire is made. There are two classifications, and the difference between them comes down to what your nanny actually spends their time doing.

A personal attendant is a nanny whose work revolves around the direct care of the child. Supervising them, feeding them, dressing them, engaging with them through their day. This includes preparing your child's meals, washing their clothes, tidying up after them, and cleaning up from their afternoon snack. Those all count as personal attendant duties because they exist because of the child, not the household. If 80 percent or more of your nanny's hours are spent in that direct care role, California classifies them as a personal attendant under the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights.

The second classification applies when duties that go beyond the child's immediate needs start taking up a meaningful amount of time in the day. Cooking for the whole family, doing the household laundry, doing whole-house cleaning, or maintaining the home in ways not connected to the child's daily routine. Once those duties exceed 20 percent of your nanny's total work hours, California classifies them as a domestic worker under Wage Order No. 15. Still fully protected under California law. Just under a different set of rules, and that difference matters more than most families realize.

This is where the classification you just read about becomes something you can actually feel in a paycheck.

Most families assume overtime works the same way everywhere. Over 40 hours a week, time and a half begins. That is the federal standard. California wrote its own rules, and for nannies, they are more specific, more protective of workers, and different enough from the federal standard that getting them wrong is genuinely easy to do without realizing it.

A personal attendant earns overtime at 1.5 times their hourly rate after nine hours in a single day or 45 hours in a week. Those thresholds are specific to this classification and different from standard California overtime rules.

A domestic worker earns overtime after eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week, with double time after 12 hours in a single day. That is one fewer hour each day and five fewer hours each week before overtime begins. Across a full schedule, those differences add up, and getting the classification wrong from the start means every paycheck has been calculated at the wrong threshold.

Live-in nannies have their own structure on top of this. A live-in personal attendant earns overtime after nine hours in a day and 45 hours in a week, with additional rules for the sixth and seventh consecutive day of work. On those days overtime applies to the first nine hours, and double time applies after that. California also does not allow sleep time to go unpaid for live-in employees if they cannot get at least five hours of uninterrupted rest.

One rule applies across every classification without exception. California does not allow a flat weekly salary that covers all hours. Your nanny is paid hourly. Overtime is calculated and paid correctly in every payroll period.

A full breakdown with real examples across every scenario is the next post in this series. What matters here is that the classification question and the overtime rules are connected, and that building the schedule and pay structure correctly from day one keeps everything running smoothly.

Most families have never thought about workers' compensation in the context of their home. It lives in their mind as a business thing, something for companies with offices and payroll departments. The reality is that California requires every employer to carry it, including you the moment you hire a nanny.

What it covers is straightforward. If your nanny is injured while performing their job, workers' compensation covers their medical expenses and lost wages. A back strain from lifting. A slip on a wet floor. Without coverage, those costs fall directly on your family, along with a $1,500 penalty per employee from the state.

The first call to make is to your homeowners' insurance provider. Most Bay Area families are surprised to find out they already have a starting point right there. Many standard homeowners' policies include some level of household employee coverage. Whether it is enough for your nanny's specific role and hours is a quick conversation with your provider. In many cases, a simple rider takes care of it. If your policy cannot accommodate it, a separate policy through the California State Compensation Insurance Fund is the other path.

That is genuinely all it takes for most families. One phone call before your nanny starts.

This one is new, and almost nobody knows it exists yet.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 294, the Workplace Know Your Rights Act, in October 2025. It took effect February 1, 2026, and it applies to every California employer, including families who hire a nanny.
Here is what it requires. Every year, starting on your nanny's first day, you provide them with written notice of their rights as an employee in California. Workers' compensation benefits, paid sick leave, immigration protections, and their rights during any law enforcement interaction. You send it the way you normally communicate, by email, text, or in person, and you keep a record that it was sent. Then you do it again twelve months later. That is the whole process.

The California Labor Commissioner provides a free template on their website. You do not need an attorney. You do not need to write anything from scratch. You download it, fill in your information, and send it.
Penalties for non-compliance reach $500 per employee per violation. If you hired your nanny before February 2026, the first deadline has already passed. Getting it done now closes that gap and establishes the annual habit going forward.

It comes up often. A family pays their nanny in cash, keeps things informal, and figures it is simpler for everyone. It feels low-risk until it is not.

California law does not disappear because wages are paid in cash. Your nanny is your employee the moment you direct their work in your home. The payment method does not change that classification, and it does not change what you owe under state law.

It creates exposure on your end. A nanny who is let go, even on good terms, can file for unemployment. The state looks into it. If wages have not been reported, you are looking at back taxes, penalties, and potentially a labor board claim. None of that requires bad intent on either side. The system is designed to protect workers, and it does its job reliably.

It also matters for your nanny. No reported wages means no Social Security record, no unemployment history, no legal standing if anything goes wrong. The most experienced nannies in the Bay Area understand this, and the strongest candidates are the ones most likely to walk away from an informal arrangement.

There is a full post coming in this series on what under-the-table arrangements actually cost families in California, including AB5, independent contractor misclassification, and the real legal picture. For now, the honest summary is this: the risk is real, it is greater than most families realize, and the legal path is not as difficult to set up as it seems from the outside.

Overtime and workers' compensation get the most attention because they carry the most immediate consequences. But California household employment law covers more ground than those two obligations, and the families who set everything up correctly from the start are the ones who know what else is on the list before their nanny's first day.

California requires household employers to provide paid sick leave. Your nanny accrues one hour for every 30 hours worked, available to use starting at 90 days of employment, and can accumulate up to 80 hours per year. This is not optional, and it is not something to figure out later. It gets built into your payroll structure from the beginning so it runs automatically and neither side has to think about it.

California requires household employers to either enroll in the CalSavers retirement savings program or file a certified exemption. CalSavers is state-run and entirely employee-funded through payroll deduction. You are not required to contribute anything as the employer. What you are required to do is register or certify your exemption. The deadline was December 31, 2025, so if you have an existing nanny and have not addressed this yet, it is worth handling now.

How and when a nanny is paid their final wages is governed by California law, not by whatever feels reasonable in the moment. If your nanny is terminated, their final paycheck is due that same day. If they resign with at least 72 hours notice, it is due on their last day. If they resign without notice, you have 72 hours. Any unused paid time off must be included in that final payment. Getting this wrong is one of the most common sources of wage claims, and it is entirely avoidable.

If your nanny drives their own vehicle to run errands, handle school pickup, or take your children anywhere as part of their job, California requires you to reimburse them at the current federal mileage rate, which is $0.725 per mile for 2026. Their drive to and from your home does not count. Work-related miles do. Keeping a simple log of those trips is all it takes to stay on top of this one.

Every new hire must be reported to the California New Employee Registry within 20 calendar days of their start date. This is a state requirement that applies to every California employer. If you are using a household payroll service, this gets handled automatically as part of setting up your nanny in their system. We partner with SurePayroll [LINK] specifically because they understand household employment and take the guesswork out of exactly this kind of requirement. If you are managing payroll yourself, it takes about five minutes to complete online. Either way it is easy to forget in the excitement of getting a new nanny started, so put it on your calendar for the first week.

None of this has to land on your plate all at once. The families I work with across San Francisco and the Bay Area hear about the employer side of things before the hire is made, not after. We walk through it together at the right moment in the process so nothing feels like a surprise on day one.

For families who want professional legal guidance on the employment structure from the start, we work with a partner employment attorney who specializes in household employment in California. For payroll, we work with SurePayroll, which handles the tax withholding, filings, and ongoing compliance so that side of things runs on its own from the moment your nanny starts.

Being a household employer in California is manageable. Most families who have been doing it for a year barely think about it anymore. Getting the foundation right is what makes that possible, and you do not have to figure it out alone.

When you are ready to start your search, we are here.

Most of what feels complicated about household employment in California becomes manageable the moment someone explains it plainly. The families who struggle are almost always the ones who found out about these obligations only after something had already gone wrong. We walk every family through this before the hire is made, not because it is a requirement, but because informed families build better working relationships from day one. You are not the first person to find this confusing. You will not be the last. And you do not have to figure it out alone.

Most families who come to us have never done this before. That is not a problem. It is exactly why we walk through the employer side of things together before a hire is ever made. You do not need to have it all figured out before you call. Start here. We will figure it out together.

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