A reader asks, after seeing the long decline of domestic service:
This surprises me rather. Nannies and au pairs are clearly domestic servants, and I would have thought that this category has exploded since the 1970s. Do your figures include child-minders?
The first good enumeration of occupations in the U.S. census was in 1880, and from then until 1990 it is easy to distinguish service workers in private households from service workers outside households. In 2000 the classification scheme changed, and a consistent definition of private household workers would take a couple of hours of recoding data ...
In any case, between 1980 and 1990 when we have a consistent classification of these things, the number of child care workers goes down, though proportionately less than the decline in cleaners and servants.
It's possible that the data can be reconciled with our anecdotal impressions if private household work has become largely part-time, casual employment which would lead to under-enumeration if workers have other "primary" jobs.
In any case, what's clear is that personal service work is moving out of the household and into the daycare center, and into the more organized marketplace of firms like MaidBrigade. The days of the live-in household worker are certainly past for most households.
| Private household workers, 1980-1990 | Number | |
| 1980 | 1990 | |
| Launderers and Ironers | 3,165 | 2,490 |
| Cooks, private household | 18,469 | 14,652 |
| Housekeepers and butlers | 101,282 | 46,192 |
| Child care workers, private household | 248,466 | 234,638 |
| Private household cleaners and servants | 570,400 | 499,681 |