£12 net per hour??

[AnimalsTwobyTwo]

I've interviewed a nanny who is asking for this salary for a 4 day week. We are London zone 2.

Do nannies get this salary in this area? She is older and very experienced, fab references (although no qualifications). Seems like an awful lot to me. I was thinking max £11 net.

The figures above are for a 50 hour week and thus perhaps a nanny working full time like that would be on a contract. For security of employment and holiday and sick pay then a salary would be the better option for parents and for the nanny.
However working 50 hours a week in a skilled and highly responsible job for a salary of 40k is not unreasonable in my opinion.
I work 4 days a week for 3 different families, and am self employed.
There are lots of variables I guess!

Not really got any input on whether the rate is reasonable, but I did want to challenge a couple of points made on here:

Crafty: you're upset that an unqualified job like cleaning seems to make a higher hourly rate than the far more important job of being a nanny.

But you have to add up the whole package. £10 net is £13 gross (adding in taxes and minimum paid holiday). Cleaners are paid gross, and with no holiday or sickness/maternity. Additionally, a nanny tends to work 10 or so hours per day for the same employer, whereas a cleaner will usually work 2-3 hours and then have to travel to her next job.

So a £10/hr/net nanny earns £130 gross for a 10 hour day. Compare that to a £15 cleaner: she would need a VERY perfectly arranged day to take home the same amount. If she had 3 x 3 hour jobs, with just 30 minutes travel between them (during which she would also need to have lunch) she'd make £135 (with the extra travel to pay for). But she's unlikely to manage that every day, plus clients cancel, plus she has no job security or sick pay.

It's nothing like as good an income as the nanny, despite sounding much higher at £15 to the nanny's £10.

ssd: why do you think it's strange for an employer to 'quibble' at an extra £1/hour but not strange for a nanny to?! OP needs childcare for 42 hours per week. That £1 (net) difference adds up to £2200 extra net to the nanny per year - at a gross extra cost of about £2850 to the employer. That's not quibbling! A pp said that the nanny needs a certain amount to pay her bills. Well likewise, an employer only has a certain amount left over when her bills are paid!

(Just as an aside, you might be less likely to 'quibble' over an extra £1/hr for a cleaner who you only need 2 hours/week, since that would cost you an extra £100 per year instead of almost £3000)

It's not about fairness, it's about market rates.

If the rates are £12ph. That's what the rates are. If the rates are lower than that the nanny won't find a job paying that and will have to take less. If the rates are higher, the family will either have to pay that or find alternative childcare.

It's rare that you see other jobs being discussed in this way. It's as though people expect child carers to be operating on a charitable basis and charging a 'fair' rate, rather than what the market will stand.

We are talking about nannies in central London. It is very, very, very expensive to live in Central London (and most families prefer a nanny who is local and not commuting in from an 1hour+ away). The nanny doesn't fold away into a drawer at the end of the day, she has to go home, to a house/flat that she pays rent/mortgage to live in. She has to pay bills. She has to eat. She has to earn enough money to do those things. Even on £45k a year she isn't going to be rolling in it. Why on earth should she take less than market rates to subsidise families who have children they can't afford to provide childcare for? (Let's not forget that a nanny will be the cheapest option for people with 3+ children, even at £14ph).

Childcare is ridiculously expensive, but underpaying a nanny is not the answer.

Absolutely, outraged - totally agree that it's about market rate. And the 'not running on a charitable basis' cuts both ways. You can't 'underpay' a nanny, since you've both agreed to that rate. If she could get a better overall combination of pay and conditions in another job on the market, then she would.

But the key thing is overall combination of pay and conditions, and I've often seen the argument about cleaners rates, where people fixate on a number rather than think through how those numbers genuinely compare.

If you think about how a market rate comes about, it means that x number of parents have weighed up the pros and cons of having a nanny over other childcare, and decided how much it's worth to them. And the same number (to simplify a bit) of people have decided that nannying is a job they would prefer to do - at that rate - than another job.

If more parents wanted nannies (maybe because the cost of nurseries went up, or salaries went up generally so more people could afford it), then there wouldn't be enough nannies and the rate would go up as people competed for them, eventually attracting more people into nannying and establishing a new balance at a higher rate.

If less parents wanted nannies (nursery costs or general wages went down, or nursery provision improved) then the surplus of nannies would drive down rates to a new balance in the same way.

In exactly the same way, if some other job (teaching - or cleaning!) was overall a better option for someone - when they think about all the factors including pay (whole package), how much they want to do that job, cost and time required for training, job certainty/uncertainty - then they would do that job instead! That would reduce the supply of nannies, and push rates to a higher point as parents competed for them.

Finally, if other jobs became less attractive overall than nannying (eg increasing paperwork in teaching) then people will eventually move into nannying pushing prices down.

And when I talk about parents competing, I simply mean that for some parents the threshold for other childcare (or staying at home) will be lower than others. When the market is pushing up, then those parents will drop out until balance is achieved.

So let's not get upset about people asking what going rates are. It's perfectly reasonable both for parents and nannies to try to get information about where that balance lies. There are no 'unfair' rates, simply people separately deciding what works for them, and hopefully making an agreement when those interests match.

Another factor limiting the demand for nannies could be that if I recollect correctly only a small proportion of women earn more than £50k gross, the kind of salary you'd probably need (and then almost all earnings would be spent on childcare). London has a higher proportion of SAHMs than other areas, where many women are higher qualified than elsewhere, possibly partly due to childcare costs. I know on MN it is often emphasised that the cost of childcare should be compared with the household's entire earnings, but in practice many families decide that the woman should stay at home as it feels difficult to "work for nothing" or at (short term at least) financial loss.

I think there's more to it than that, as said above it's the total package

For example I pay my nanny until 6. I am pretty much always home at 5.45, often home between 5 and 5.30 - so she often gets off early. Next week I've got a late start and an early finish so she'll get nearly a whole day off as I'll look after the kids (whereas I could just go out and do stuff and get her to work as usual). I pay her mileage in full without quibbling it, she has a proper contract and paid leave etc. If she had a hospital appointment I'd be fine with her going in paid time. If I can get the leave from work I'm going to give her an extra week's leave as a wedding present when she gets married next year.

But there's no way I could afford to pay her £12 per hour net - she already gets over half my take home salary, and that's with one day a week family childcare.

It's all give and take.

Well I found Crafty's reference to her self-employment status and talk of 'proper contracts' if you're 'full time' interesting. My theory on this is these headline net hourly rates are driven around playing with employment status and not declaring all the hours. Undoubtedly some people are - I do have a central London friend on an eye watering salary who could cover a 46K salary and if there's one there must be more. However, the 'fully compliant' people I know well enough to discuss this with are paying 10 p/h net. This is in zone 2 London.

Sorry I should say I believe my friend when she says she is paying everything she should on the rates discussed on here - when we've discussed it before she's says: "So nanny salaries are about forty grand, right?" I have no reason to believe she isn't paying everything nanny tax tells her to. But she is the only person I know who can afford to do this. The others who are compliant found nannies on lower rates.

Not many nannies work full time in my view. 30-40 hours a week maybe but the 50+ hours a week jobs seem to be quite rare.

If the next Government provides more childcare provision, will that result in lower wages and more part-time nanny jobs as the 'free childcare' would be used but before/after care would still be needed - or will we see children's centres for children 0-16 starting up and opening 6am-8pm. You never know what will happen!

You need to agree a gross wage, It's so much simpler!

You generally calculate the gross from the net salary the nanny wants/the family offers.

I simply can't afford £12 net an hour. It's more than I earn so doesn't balance out. Lucky for me I've found somebody who is happy with less. Surely millions of us think we're worth more than we're actually paid?

I know of a nanny who had a payrise recently and went from £8 to £14 net an hour!

Offer her what you can afford, if she likes you and can afford to work for less then she may take it. I recently accepted a job for £1.50 an hour less than I was being offered elsewhere because of other perks I was offered (an extra weeks paid holiday) and because I liked the family so much and felt so comfortable with them.

Also people discussing what nannies are paid in zone 2 keep in mind that there is a huge difference between zone 2 in say lewisham, where £10net would be fine and say zone 2 Maida vale or Kensington where I absolutely would expect more than £10net to be the norm.

Well, we have found a lovely and very experienced nanny for £11 net per hour so am happy. For what it's worth I absolutely agree that nannying (and domestic work generally) is an extremely important job and should be well reimbursed and actually people who take advantage of and try to underpay their domestic workers is one of my bug bears. As a student myself a while ago I nannied in Europe and was paid 7 euros an hour, under minimum wage even at the time I think.

However, as a pp pointed out £12 net per hour full time grosses out at something over £40K (i haven't got the exact sums to hand) - more than some doctors - I just checked out of interest online and a senior house officer doctor in a hospital gets between £28K and £39K apparently.

Of course it's a market - which is why I was asking on Mumsnet to see if it was the going rate! We pay all tax & NI and declare everything (it's illegal otherwise and not fair on the nanny) so it's very expensive but of course if you find the right nanny it's absolutely worth it if you can afford it.

I would have thought the hourly rates quoted would be the Gross Pay not Net?

We pay 12 an hour gross for one kid. Our nanny charges 15 for two. We are in zone 3. We had to pay the agency 1000 finders fee. We pay the cleaner 10 so can't imagine going under 12 for the nanny really.

Unfortunately, adp, rates always seem to be discussed net, and then have to be converted to gross for the contract

AliceAnne, you'll know better what £12 gross comes out at net (since you can see on the payslip) but I guess it's about £9.50? And the £15 gross she charges for 2 children is about the £11 net OP is looking to pay.

It will be much simpler when everyone eventually moves over to talking gross figures!