Domestic helpers and carers: half of the relationships under a year

Contractual and wage insecurity is a salient feature of the work of many housekeepers, carers and nannies. Half of the contracts last less than a year and many relationships end within a few months. This reflects the temporary needs of families, but also a lack of attractiveness of the sector, which does not guarantee stable prospects for workers and is not perceived by young people as a sector to focus on. In addition, there is a strong dependence on foreign labour (68.9 per cent involve workers with citizenship other than Italian) and poor professional qualifications dominate: half of the workers are without specific training.

These are the key points of the paper 'Contracts and wages in domestic work, evidence from the Family(net)work database', edited by Censis for Assindatcolf, which will be previewed in Rome on Thursday 19 February.

The study took into account 247,041 contracts, concluded by households employing domestic workers associated in Assindatcolf, Webcolf, Acli in famiglia and Gestisci la tua colf. The first relevant fact is that out of 91,343 relationships terminated in 2025, half were concluded in the same year. This is 46,000 contracts, 18.6% of the entire database. This precariousness mainly concerns workers hired to replace others for rest cover (37.1%) and night care (44.4%). 7.6% of the relationships had a duration of less than 30 days.

The 'contractual stress' - as Censis defines it - concerns more than other workers theuntrained carers, classified in level C super: 27.9% (practically one third) of the contracts activated and terminated in 2025 belong to this level. The average duration of C super level contracts, established before 2025, stops at 2.7 years, while for B level contracts (general collaborators with different functions) it rises to 5.9 years. The average duration of employment relationships is 4.1 years.

The analysis of the contracts also focused on the presence of thesuperminimum in the pay envelope, the only element of discretion available to the employer to manage the relationship with the collaborator or family assistant, as opposed to the minimum pay levels established by the collective agreement. However, it is also the item that 'sterilises' increases linked to renewals of the collective labour agreement, if the worker's hourly wage is already above the defined minimum threshold. The superminimo is present in 35.9% of the contracts, with an average value of EUR 119. The highest value of the superminimo is awarded to workers who guarantee night presence: 34 euros per 100 euros of basic pay, against an average value of 22 euros.