The household staff jobs that pay the most in the US are also some of the hardest to fill. At the top you’ve got chief of staff, private chef, estate manager, and senior personal assistant, almost always for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families in New York, California, and Florida.
No other country pays private staff this well. Morgan & Mallet’s 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report puts 60.7% of the world’s highest-paying household roles in the US, ahead of Switzerland at 28.6%.
But pay is only half the picture. The other thing that matters is how hard a role is to fill, because when a family can’t find anyone, as a candidate, you are able to set the conditions, to some degree.
Which household staff jobs pay the most in the US in 2026?
The biggest salaries go to the senior and specialist roles. Here are the 2026 yearly ranges from our salary data.
| Role | US Salary Range (USD) |
|---|---|
| Chief of Staff | $150,000 – $300,000+ |
| Private Chef | $100,000 – $300,000+ |
| Estate Manager | $150,000 – $250,000+ |
| Executive Assistant | $120,000 – $250,000+ |
| Personal Assistant | $80,000 – $250,000+ |
| Domestic Couple | $100,000 – $250,000 |
| House Manager | $100,000 – $180,000+ |
| Butler | $90,000 – $180,000+ |
If the job has a confidentiality agreement, you can add 15 to 20% to the base pay. The closer you work to the principal, the more that matters. In Miami, 79% of the personal assistants we place have worked with a security team before.
Which roles are hardest for US families to fill in 2026?
These are the roles where you, the candidate, have the upper hand. They take years to grow into, and if you have or are willing to get experience in these areas, you will be in demand.
1. Estate manager. An estate manager runs a private home, looking after the staff, the budget, the maintenance, often for more than one property.
Around 10% of our US requests are for estate managers, and good ones are very hard to find. Prove you’ve run a multi-property household and you are in strong position on the job market in the US. There’s usually a second job hidden in it too. The estate manager often builds the rest of the team.
“When a client needs a whole new team for a property, we start with the estate manager,” says Morgan Richez, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet. “Then the estate manager helps us recruit the rest. He knows the property, so he knows what kind of gardener or housekeeper he wants.”
2. Domestic couple. A domestic couple is two people who run a home together. Very often, one does the housekeeping and cooking, the other takes the grounds, the maintenance, and the driving.
The pay is normally from $100,000 to $250,000, and most of the demand is for holiday homes that are empty for parts of the year. The hard part is finding people who actually do this work. Most experienced couples are in their late forties or fifties, and the younger ones won’t always take a live-in role.
3. Chief of staff. The chief of staff is right at the top of the household, running the other staff, the budgets, the properties, and anything else the principal has going on. It can pay up to $300,000, and more and more families want one senior person in charge of everything.
4. Specialist private chef. Plenty of people apply for chef jobs, so the lower end of the market has lots of candidates. The top end is quite different. Here families want a chef who’ll travel with them, move between their homes, and cook exactly the way they like, and there aren’t many of those around.
The US accounts for 35% of the world’s demand for private chefs, and a lot of the top earners now work freelance.
“Some chefs work in Florida or the South of France for the summer, then move to Aspen for the winter,” says Morgan Richez. “As a freelance you can charge the client a lot, because there’s a lot of demand and they want the best chef.”
5. Senior personal assistant with security experience. A PA who has worked alongside a security team is hard to come by. In Los Angeles, 77% of the ones we place sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Which US states have the best household staff jobs?
Four states hire the most staff, and one more part of the country is catching up.
New York: the most roles, the fastest pace
New York is the busiest US market for household staff. Most of the work is in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and a lot of those families also keep a place in the Hamptons. Hiring moves faster than in Europe, and it usually runs through a family office before you ever meet the principal.
“There’s a law for everything here in the US,” says Jonathan de Vanderbilt, a recruiter in Morgan & Mallet’s New York office with 40 years in staffing. “Anything can turn into a lawsuit, so the process is more structured. We can’t ask age, race, religion, or gender.”
More and more, New York families want live-out staff. Space in the apartments is tight, and they’d rather have a local who already knows the city.
“By having someone local who lives out and knows the city, going back and forth nine to five, that works better,” says de Vanderbilt. “That extra staff quarters, like the West Wing across the field with a guest house, that is not New York.”
California: top pay, strong worker protections
California really splits in two. In Los Angeles it’s mostly entertainment money, out in Bel Air and Malibu. The Bay Area is tech founders. The state also gives domestic workers proper legal protection, with overtime, meal breaks, and minimum wage enforced by the California Department of Industrial Relations. The downside is a high state income tax, so a good amount of that salary goes straight back out.
Florida: the fastest-growing market and the best take-home
Florida has no state income tax, so a salary in Miami or Palm Beach leaves more in your pocket than the same figure in New York or Los Angeles. A lot of the market here has what are called snowbirds, so the hiring season runs opposite to the northeast.
“Our high season for hiring starts around August and September, because by October everyone needs to be ready,” says a Morgan & Mallet recruiter in Miami. “The snowbirds come down from Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Canada. The staff rotate between properties and follow the principals.”
Texas: the quiet climber
Texas is growing fast, mostly in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, and the demand is there just about all year rather than spiking with the seasons. “In Austin, people stay put, they don’t move around,” says the same recruiter. “So the hiring is steady all year.” Like Florida, Texas charges no state income tax, so you keep more of what you earn.
The mountain west: seasonal and high-paying
Aspen, Jackson Hole, and Scottsdale are second-home markets where families need staff, often a domestic couple. Wyoming and Nevada charge no state income tax, so a winter season can pay surprisingly well.
How do you move up to a higher-paying household role?
Write down the work you already do, and stay somewhere long enough to prove it. Staff used to stay with one family for around 20 years. Now it’s more like 3.
“Clients want someone who stayed at a job for five-plus years, because that shows they can mesh with a family,” says Eric Rios, a recruiter in the New York office who used to hire software engineers at Google. He says he checks location first, then your years of experience, then how long you stayed in each job.
There’s a second way up. More and more families want one person to do three jobs.
“Now they want a house assistant or house manager to do those three jobs,” says de Vanderbilt. “Instead of hiring three people, they hire one at a higher salary. They tidy, they meal prep, maybe they drop the kids at a play date.”
If you can cover all that, you go up a level.
But more than experience, two habits get people shortlisted. One is planning a few steps ahead. The candidates who impress Rios walk him through what a client’s flight tomorrow means. They book the car for the right pickup, check the boarding time, pack for the whole family, and get the kids down early so they sleep on the plane. “You’re thinking of things they’d never think about,” he says, “but that make their lives a lot easier.”
The other habit is presentation, and candidates forget about it all the time.
“These are six-figure salary roles, and candidates often don’t know how to write a resume or take a professional headshot,” says one of our Miami recruiters. “Clients want to see your career timeline, what you did for each family, and why you left. That is what matters most.”
Where the domestic staffing opportunity is in 2026
The best-paid roles in 2026 are the ones families can’t easily fill. New York has the most openings by far. If you can run a household and lead a team, you’re worth more than five years ago.
Looking for a position in private household staffing? Apply online, or call our US team on +1 (646)965-2308
