How much does domestic help cost?
What is the hourly wage?
The hourly wage of a domestic helper throughout Switzerland is around CHF 28.– including social security contributions and the obligatory holiday supplement. In principle the hourly wage is freely negotiable. Depending on experience the minimum wage of a domestic helper without special training is between CHF 19.95 and 21.85 gross. You may not pay less than that if you employ a domestic helper for 5 hours or more per week.
Various factors play an important role in determining the hourly wage. For example, tasks, qualifications, experience and the regional wage level. On Homeservice24 you can see what the hourly wage of a domestic helper is before contacting them and use this value as a guide. Depending on the qualifications, you can expect the following gross hourly wage for a domestic helper:
These values are based on a national average. Please note that this is the gross hourly wage. This means that social security contributions are to be deducted from it. Therefore, the net hourly wage that your domestic help receives in the end is a little lower.
You can calculate how the gross salary and the total costs are made up in detail, for example, in this calculator for the canton of Zurich:
Regular cleaning is already possible with a small budget
How expensive it is to have your flat cleaned depends mainly on the size of the flat and the tasks of the domestic helper.
If your cleaning person comes weekly, you can roughly calculate half an hour per 20 sqm. For an 80 sqm flat with kitchen and bathroom, you can therefore assume 2 hours of work. This time is sufficient for standard tasks such as vacuuming, mopping and cleaning the bathroom. If you also want the domestic helper to clean windows, tidy up or do the laundry, you will have to allow a little more time.
Example
For a cleaning job of 2 hours with a gross hourly wage of CHF 30.-, you must therefore calculate 2 x CHF 30.- and arrive at CHF 60.- per cleaning job per week. You deduct the social security contributions from the gross wage and pay the net wage to the cleaning lady. The cleaning of your flat costs you CHF 240 gross per month and CHF 2.880 per year (calculated with 48 working weeks).
Find domestic helpWhat other costs are there?
After you have registered your domestic helper with the AHV, you must pay 6.05% of the gross wage to the AHV for social insurance. Because the domestic helper is only paid the net wage, she has already paid her contribution to the social insurances.
As an employer, you also contribute to the social security of the cleaning lady. Therefore, in addition to the gross salary, you also pay the employer's half of the social security contributions (approx. 6-8%). In the above example, this amounts to about CHF 200 per year. You also have to take out accident insurance for your household, which in most cases costs about CHF 100 per year.
