The state of domestic work in 2025: 15 years after Convention No. 189
Fifteen years after the adoption of the ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), this statistical brief presents new global and regional estimates of domestic workers, including their numbers, demographic profile, employment, informality and working conditions. It examines progress towards formalization, persistent gaps in wages and working time, and the challenges of ensuring decent work for the world's 80 million domestic workers.
Domestic work remains a major source of employment and an essential part of the care economy. In 2025, an estimated 80.0 million people aged 15 and over were employed as domestic workers, up from 75.6 million in 2019.
However, domestic work has not grown as a share of overall employment, which has remained relatively stable at 2.2 per cent of total employment and 4.4 per cent of employees.
Growth in the number of domestic workers has been concentrated in certain regions and largely reflects broader employment growth rather than an expansion of domestic work.
While the rate of informality globally has risen from 81 to 83 per cent, this is also due to a larger number of domestic workers in countries with high levels of informality. Indeed, in the majority of countries for which data was available in 2019 and 2025, informality has effectively decreased.