NAV Hauswirtschaft: the federal standard contract for domestic work

Who the NAV Hauswirtschaft covers

The NAV covers employment relationships with domestic staff in private households: cleaning, laundry, ironing, cooking, shopping and the everyday support of an elderly person at home. Collective households are outside it. A residential home, a boarding school or a hospital is not one.

It bites from an average of five hours a week with the same employer. Below that the federal minimum wages do not apply, and nothing else changes: your household is still the employer and accident insurance stays compulsory. The wage is declared from the first franc, except under the young Helper exemption, under which nothing is due below a first age limit and a small yearly wage stays free of contributions up to a second.

Several relationships sit outside it: training and internship relationships, people employed mainly to look after children such as childminders and babysitters, spouses and partners, work between parents and children, farming households under a cantonal agricultural contract, and household staff in diplomatic service.

The federal NAV settles the minimum wage and nothing more. Working and rest times, holiday entitlement, pay during illness, overtime, probation and notice come from the cantonal standard contract or from employment contract law.

The three wage categories

The floor follows the qualification of the person, not the task. There are three categories: unskilled, unskilled with at least four years of professional experience in domestic work, and skilled. Whether the day is spent cleaning or helping an elderly person changes nothing.

The four years are four years in domestic work, not four years of work in general, and they count with any employer. Ask for the references before the first payslip and keep them with the contract: the household has to be able to explain the category.

Skilled has two doors. A federal certificate of proficiency in home economics, EFZ, CFC or AFC, or a completed basic training of at least three years suited to the work, reaches the top category. A federal vocational certificate, EBA, AFP or CFP, or a basic training of at least two years, reaches the middle.

Every figure in the table is a gross hourly wage, before any supplement and before contributions and withholding tax. The supplements below are added to it, never contained in it.

Holiday and public holiday supplements

Someone paid by the hour is paid for the hours worked, so a week of holiday carries no wage of its own. The entitlement becomes a supplement on the hourly wage instead: 4 weeks for most employees, 5 weeks up to the year the person turns twenty and, in several cantonal contracts, from the completed fiftieth year.

The supplement is a share of the hourly wage, added on top. Holidays and public holidays are counted separately, each on the basis of the hourly wage, never added together into one figure. The contract and every payslip have to show it on a line of its own.

These are NAV practice rather than one national rule. The number of paid public holidays follows the canton, a cantonal contract or your own can grant more holiday, and age or long service can raise it. Verify for your case.

Cantons and cities that ask for more

The federal figure is a floor and never a ceiling. Basel-Stadt, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel and Ticino also have a cantonal minimum wage law, but it does not reach household work in the same way in each canton.

Geneva sits outside the federal NAV: its own standard contract for domestic work, the CTT-EDom, sets minimum wages graded by qualification, with garden work in a class of its own. Those minimum wages are binding until 31 December 2026.

In Geneva the cantonal minimum wage applies to household work too, and a standard contract with a lower minimum wage does not reduce it. In Neuchâtel the cantonal minimum wage applies to household work too. In Basel-Stadt and Jura the cantonal minimum wage gives way: where the federal NAV covers your Helper, the NAV's minimum wages are the ones to pay.

Ticino's minimum wage law covers household work, and a standard contract with a lower minimum wage does not lower the law's minimum, except from 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2028. In that period, where the federal NAV covers your Helper, the NAV's minimum wages apply instead.

Three cities go above their canton: Zurich, Winterthur and Lucerne. Lucerne applies already. Zurich and Winterthur have theirs confirmed by the courts with a start date still to be announced, and Helpore applies them now.

What decides is the place where the work is done, not where the Helper or your household lives. A Helper commuting into Geneva is owed the Geneva rate. The cantonal and municipal minimum wage pages below carry the current figures.

• Kantonaler Mindestlohn
• Kommunaler Mindestlohn
• Ferienentschädigung

What this means with Helpore

Your household is the employer, and the wage is agreed between you and the person who works in your home.

The NAV is a floor, never a ceiling, and a cantonal or municipal minimum wage can also apply at the address where the work happens. The section on cantons above says where, and how it ranks beside the NAV. With Helpore Flex, Helpers set their own rates and Helpore's floor never sits below the NAV.

With Helpore Admin Light, Helpore records the agreed terms and prepares the exact monthly wage and contribution maths. You register, file and pay yourself, and no power of attorney changes hands.

With Helpore Admin, Helpore runs the administration of the employment in your name, under your power of attorney: registration, monthly payroll and payslips, contributions, insurance administration and the year end statement.