Global and regional estimates on domestic workers

While domestic workers are an important group in many countries, they are often invisible in employment statistics – they might be recorded as cooks, domestic housekeepers, home-based personal care workers, gardeners or domestic cleaners and helpers. To improve the understanding on the magnitude of domestic work as a profession, the department is currently compiling statistics on domestic workers from official national sources and international data repositories. These data will serve as the basis for regional and global estimates on the number of domestic workers that will be made in collaboration with the ILO’s Department of Statistics.

Coverage of domestic workers by key employment conditions laws

Employment statistics on domestic workers will be matched with the rich legal information already collected by the ILO Working Conditions Laws Database. This will provide a picture of the extent to which the world’s domestic workers currently enjoy some of the basic entitlements that are enjoyed by other wage workers generally under national legislation, specifically, a limit on weekly hours of work, a minimum wage and maternity leave.

The global and regional estimates will be published in May 2012.