# Methods and source ledger **Study:** *Households bucked the trend: registrations for short-term starts at Swiss employers rose 9.5% in private-household services as the national total fell* **Evidence freeze:** 10 September 2026 **Primary reference period:** calendar year 2025 **Supporting reference date:** 31 July 2026 **Author:** Gilberto de la Fuente, Director at Helpore ## What each dataset measures The primary estimand is **registrations for short-term starts with Swiss employers in the private-household-services row**. It is not a count of unique workers, households, employers, jobs or full-time equivalents. The supporting SEM estimand is a **stock of valid G-permit records assigned to the administrative branch group “Häusliche Dienste” on a reference date**. It is not an active-worker count. The notification-flow and permit-stock panels describe different universes, so adding them together would not produce a meaningful workforce total. A separately labelled Helpore platform snapshot describes a filtered set of Helper accounts through 10 September 2026. It is an aggregate of de-identified, self-reported platform records, not authority registrations, completed placements, verified work or a national estimate. The records contain nationality and a Swiss entry date; they do not establish the person’s previous country or country of departure. The platform snapshot is separate from, and non-additive to, the SECO and SEM series. ## Reproducible headline calculation | Measure | 2024 | 2025 | Calculation | Publication form | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:| | Private-household-services registrations for short-term starts with Swiss employers | 1,726 | 1,890 | `1,890 / 1,726 - 1 = 0.095017` | **+9.5%** | | Equivalent all-branch registrations | 171,819 | 166,955 | `166,955 / 171,819 - 1 = -0.028309` | **−2.8%** | | Difference between rates | — | — | `0.095017 - (-0.028309) = 0.123326` | **12.3 percentage points** | SECO's November 2025 explanatory report describes 1,726 as the 2024 record in a series shown from 2005. Because the same channel is 1,890 in 2025, this study describes the result as **“the highest level in the published series since at least 2005.”** The cited series does not support an all-time claim for years before 2005. SECO's complete private-household-services row contains 1,890 Swiss-employer starts, 133 self-employed providers and 158 posted employees in 2025: 2,181 registrations in the short-stay statistics. The row rose from 1,994 to 2,181; SECO publishes **+9.4%**. That was the second-largest increase among the 16 non-total branch groupings, after public administration (+19.3%). This full-row ranking is secondary and is not the same universe as the primary Swiss-employer channel. ## Supporting permit calculations | Measure | Calculation | Publication form | |---|---:|---:| | Valid permits in “Häusliche Dienste”, 31 July 2026 | source cell | 5,828 | | Recorded for women | `5,194 / 5,828 = 0.891215` | 89.1% | | Recorded in Ticino sheet | `3,050 / 5,828 = 0.523336` | 52.3% | | Domestic-category change, July 2022–July 2026 | `5,828 / 6,066 - 1 = -0.039235` | −3.9% | | All valid G-permit change, July 2022–July 2026 | `479,559 / 433,379 - 1 = 0.106558` | +10.7% | The female-share ranking retains 57 named branch rows in the three economic-sector blocks and excludes the overall total, sector totals, “Ohne Angabe” and “Unbekannt”. “Häusliche Dienste” has the highest female share in that frozen SEM table. This is not a ranking of Swiss professions or the whole labour market. ## Separately labelled Helpore platform snapshot | Measure | Calculation | Publication form | |---|---:|---:| | Active Helper accounts through 10 September 2026 | source filter | 587 | | Active accounts with a recorded non-Swiss EU/EFTA nationality | source filter | 192 | | Eligible Helper accounts through 10 September 2026 | source filter | 185 | | Accounts selecting the EU/EFTA short-stay route and supplying a Swiss entry date in the prior 90 days | source filter | 58 | | Share | `58 / 185 = 0.313514` | **31.4%** | The funnel begins with 587 email-confirmed, enabled, non-deleted, non-test Helper accounts. Public-profile visibility, onboarding completion and marketplace requestability were not inclusion criteria. Of those accounts, 192 recorded a non-Swiss EU/EFTA nationality and 185 also had a recorded eligibility route; those 185 form the denominator. The numerator contains 58 denominator accounts that selected the EU/EFTA short-stay route and supplied a Swiss entry date within the prior 90 days. The records are self-reported and were aggregated after de-identification. No row-level account export is published in order to protect account privacy. The aggregate was re-run on 11 September 2026 against the 10 September evidence cutoff and reproduced 587 → 192 → 185 → 58. The privacy-safe audit file records the field-level filter, timestamp and SHA-256 fingerprint without publishing account identifiers. This snapshot does not verify an authority registration, completed placement or current work, and it is not a national estimate. It records nationality and a Swiss entry date, not the previous country or country of departure. It must not be added to the SECO notification flow or SEM permit stock. ## Official sources 1. **SECO, Statistical appendix to the FlaM Report 2025.** Calendar-year 2025 flows; released 17 June 2026. Tables 1-1 and 1-3. 2. **SECO, Explanatory report on the standard employment contract for domestic work.** Dated 12 November 2025. Pages 9–10 establish the 2024 value of 1,726 and the prior-record wording. 3. **SEM, foreign-national statistics, July 2026 archive.** Released 17 August 2026. 4. **SEM, table 5-20, 31 July 2026.** Valid G permits by branch, nationality, sex and canton. 5. **SEM, notification procedure for short-term work.** Administrative context only. 6. **FSO/BFS, profile of the Cross-border Commuters Statistics.** Methodological reason valid permits are not active-worker counts. 7. **FSO/BFS, NOGA 2025 division 97.** Definition of activities of households as employers of domestic personnel. ## Archived files and checksums All files below are stored in `source-ledger/raw/`. | File | SHA-256 | |---|---| | `seco_flam_2025_statistical_annex_de.pdf` | `567123d48c9bdc829765fc2e8eeb12e5c31a1ac4c26e590d7133d85316872189` | | `seco_nav_hauswirtschaft_2025_de.pdf` | `409df4d71d9010a0f6a43abdfe41dd02a90fc4f1ecde2400660fe280dcd4b856` | | `sem_5-20_july_2022.xlsx` | `282828a03bd66ad409708e8464a35931cac84dae529f015abb0f8668e8542853` | | `sem_5-20_july_2023.xlsx` | `96d96f1495334914e7d0f53d9387597c74e02bc612847611da2cabfe93aaca70` | | `sem_5-20_july_2024.xlsx` | `8677a47b54a1dc3c6efee64038513b2df39610f563cd7f9d67b20b6f6881a57f` | | `sem_5-20_july_2025.xlsx` | `7c611dad98b7d4a43c3b3f6377a8b4e576296b8b93c0f765357c7e02bd2f7108` | | `sem_5-20_july_2026.xlsx` | `6a8c1ed1f490cfc5a81cf950f648fa2c328ffb58edcc835c0d75b5baceb707d2` | | `bfs_households_2024.csv` | `9388125cbcb36664efe5b195f5a9879cabae5096bd72da6172bca6f4c88f77c0` | The household CSV is archived for audit history but is not used for a headline or prevalence ratio. The proposed “one per 56 households” line was rejected because it joins unmatched units and dates and turns permits into workers. ## Machine-readable extracts - `data/headline_metrics_input.csv` — frozen source cells for the primary calculation. - `data/short_stay_notifications_2024_2025.csv` — every non-total branch row plus total from SECO table 1-3. - `data/sem_domestic_permit_trend_july_2022_2026.csv` — like-for-like July snapshots. - `data/sem_permit_gender_branches_july_2026.csv` — all 57 named branch rows used in the ranking. - `data/sem_domestic_permits_by_canton_july_2026.csv` — all 26 canton rows. - `data/sem_domestic_permits_by_nationality_july_2026.csv` — national category composition. - `HELPORE_90_DAY_HOUSEHOLD_EVIDENCE.xlsx` — formula-driven evidence workbook with native charts. - `source-ledger/build_study_workbook.mjs` — reproducible workbook build. ## Data dictionary | Term | Meaning in this study | Does not mean | |---|---|---| | Registration for a short-term start | A record in SECO's short-stay statistics for the Swiss-employer channel | a unique worker, a job created or a household | | Combined short-stay row | Swiss-employer starts + self-employed providers + posted employees | three mutually exclusive people in every possible longitudinal sense | | Valid G permit | An authorisation recorded as valid in ZEMIS on the reference date | proof the holder was actively working that day | | Woman/man | The binary sex categories available in the source workbook | gender identity or a full representation of gender diversity | | Canton sheet | Administrative canton assignment in the SEM workbook | residence, nationality or border crossing used | | “Häusliche Dienste” | The literal legacy administrative branch label in SEM table 5-20 | a verified one-to-one NOGA 97 universe or every person serving a home | | Active Helper account | An email-confirmed, enabled, non-deleted, non-test Helpore Helper account | a public marketplace profile, completed onboarding, completed placement or verified worker | | Eligible Helper account | An active Helper account with a recorded non-Swiss EU/EFTA nationality and a recorded eligibility route | an authority registration, completed placement, verified worker or nationally representative observation | | EU/EFTA short-stay route selection | A self-reported eligibility-route choice paired with a Swiss entry date in the prior 90 days | proof of authority notification, country of departure or current employment | ## Classification and system caveat The notification procedure migrated to EasyGov in March 2025, with improvements including easier and more precise industry assignment. The official source does not quantify whether this created a classification break. For that reason, the 2024–2025 comparison is descriptive. ## Novelty audit boundary Multilingual exact-number and phrase searches found no indexed public analysis using the 1,726→1,890 household-employer channel, the +9.5% versus −2.8% comparison or the complete current supporting permit panel. This is why the study describes the pattern as previously unreported rather than claiming universal firstness. Paywalled and offline archives remain outside the scope of the public search. The longstanding female concentration in domestic work is not new. The study presents 89.1% as a current measurement within a specific permit table, not as a social discovery. ## Sponsor disclosure This analysis was conducted and published by Helpore. Helpore operates in the Swiss household-services market and supports household employment, payroll, social-insurance, source-tax and related administrative workflows. The official-data headline, national comparison and permit analysis use data collected and published by SECO, SEM and BFS/FSO. A separately labelled platform snapshot uses de-identified, self-reported Helpore account records. ## Publication and reproducibility status The study and evidence package were published on 11 September 2026 using an evidence freeze of 10 September 2026. The official-data calculations, source references, assumptions and limitations are available in this package for independent reproduction; the Helpore platform snapshot is reported only in aggregate to protect account privacy. This is an exploratory secondary analysis and has not been externally peer reviewed.