The Morgan & Mallet Household Staff Industry Report · 2026
Help Wanted
An analysis of 450,000+ applications across 70 countries · Updated June 2026
Executive summary
The shortage isn’t people. It’s suitability.
The world’s wealthiest households are not short of applicants. They are short of the right people. A single personal assistant role attracts more than a hundred applications, yet across roughly 450,000 applications since 2016, Morgan & Mallet turns down close to four candidates for every one it accepts.
This report draws on Morgan & Mallet’s network of 56,300+ vetted household professionals, recruited across 70 countries for more than 100 roles. It sets out what the data shows about who the wealthy can and cannot hire, what that talent costs, and who now does the work.
Every figure is from Morgan & Mallet’s own data: our recruitment records, candidate database and 2025/26 Salary Report. Free to cite with a link. See How to cite.
What Morgan & Mallet’s data shows
Four findings
Suitability, not supply
Plenty apply. Few are right. Only around one in five assessed applications is accepted.
Scarcity sets pay
The rarest roles cost the most. Domestic-couple pay has roughly doubled in a decade.
Loyalty is scarce
Staff are more experienced than ever, yet tenure has fallen from about 20 years to 3.
A global workforce
124 nationalities, 91 languages. After the French, the largest group is Filipino.
The bar is high
The wealthy expect proven, experienced staff, and people with that depth are hard to find.
Across all Morgan & Mallet’s roles, the average is:
A skill set and a reputation like that take a career to build. The professionals who have them are scarce, and the households that want them compete to keep them.
Source: Morgan & Mallet candidate database, June 2026.
Chapter One
The shortage isn’t a lack of people.
It’s a lack of the right ones.
A personal assistant role attracts more than a hundred applications. Yet for every candidate we accept, we turn down close to four. Volume was never the problem. Suitability is.
A single personal assistant role brings in more than a hundred applications. A private chauffeur role, more than a hundred too. By that measure there is no shortage of people who want to work in private households.
Yet good staff are harder to find than they have ever been. Across roughly 450,000 applications since 2016, fewer than one in five of those assessed to a decision made it through. The volume is high, but the suitability is hard to find.
Volume is not suitability
The roles that attract the most applicants are not the roles that are easiest to fill well. A personal assistant search has around 112 applications on average. These are the jobs people think they can do, so the applications pour in. The hard part is finding the few who can actually do the role well and have the experience working in high-net-worth households.
“A chef role in California or New York could get 200 applicants. The range is about 20 to 200. Of those lowest batch of 20, maybe five will be good fits for the role.”
Eric Rios, recruiter at Morgan & Mallet (formerly recruited at Google)
Every candidate does a 90-minute structured interview before reaching a client. References are checked with former employers, employment is verified for five to seven years back, with criminal background screening. Most applicants do not make it past that process, and the reason is rarely a poor CV.
“We check the character of the candidate, because this is a job inside a family’s life. In an office, I see someone nine to five and that’s it. But if they live with me, they see me at dinner with my family, when I’m stressed, when I’m upset. That’s why character matters more than a CV ever could.”
Morgan Richez, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet
Suitability is often something a CV cannot show, discretion and judgement are not easy to put on paper. Those qualities are scarce, and scarcity is what the rest of this report is about.
Source: Morgan & Mallet’s own recruitment data and candidate database.
Chapter Two
What scarcity does to pay
At the top of the market a private chef can earn $300,000. The harder a role is to fill with the right person, the higher its base salary.
At the top of the market, a private chef in the United States can earn $300,000 a year. So can a chief of staff. A personal assistant or an estate manager can make up to $250,000. A butler up to $180,000. Those figures are what scarcity costs.
Two markets stand out for highest salaries. The United States has the highest pay for executive roles, chefs, and security-conscious positions. Switzerland has it for childcare and skilled service. Together they account for nearly nine in ten of the highest-paying roles Morgan & Mallet places.
| Role | Highest-paying country | Top salary (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Private Chef | USA | $300,000 |
| Chief of Staff | USA | $300,000 |
| Personal Assistant | USA | $250,000 |
| Estate Manager | USA | $250,000 |
| Maternity Nurse | Switzerland | $186,031 |
| Butler | USA | $180,000 |
| Travelling Nanny | UAE | $163,200 |
| Governess | Switzerland | $156,026 |
Source: Morgan & Mallet 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report.
The scarcity premium
The clearest proof of what scarcity does to pay is the domestic couple. It is one of the hardest roles to fill anywhere, and its price has roughly doubled in a decade.
“When we started, a domestic couple in France was 3,000 to 3,500 net a month. Now you need at least 4,500 or 5,000 a month. In the US, you need at least $150,000 a year. That’s the minimum.”
Morgan Richez, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet
The cost behind the cost: tenure
Average tenure has fallen from around 20 years to roughly 3. A household that once hired a housekeeper for a generation now rehires the role several times over the same time span, and each search has the same problem, with a lack of a strong pool of potential candidates.
Chapter Three
Two kinds of hard to fill
Average applications per search range from about 112 down to 14. A flooded role means screening becomes very important. A scarce role means a lot more time needs to be taken searching for candidates.
The average number of applications per search ranges from around 112 down to about 14, depending on the role. That spread is the clearest map of where private wealth struggles to hire, and it does not work the way most people expect. A high number does not mean a role is easy to fill.
| Role | Avg. applications per search |
|---|---|
| Personal Assistant (most contested) | 112 |
| Private Chauffeur | 106 |
| Estate / House Manager | 80 |
| Butler | 48 |
| Private Chef | 46 |
| Nanny | 37 |
| Housekeeper | 34 |
| Governess | 26 |
| Domestic Couple (hardest to fill) | 24 |
| Yacht Captain (small sample) | 14 |
Source: Morgan & Mallet recruitment data, 2022–2026.
At the top, the work is filtering: the right person is in the pile of applications, but so is everyone else, and the best candidates do not wait. At the bottom, the problem is different. Few apply because few can do the work, or will.
“People who used to work as a couple in the yachting industry, this is the best of the best. When you’ve got a background in yachting, you know what top service is.”
Morgan Richez, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet
Chapter Four
Who serves the wealthy
124 nationalities. 91 languages. An experienced, mobile workforce that follows the families it serves across borders, and is as likely to come from Manila as from Paris.
Based on Morgan & Mallet’s candidate database, the people who run the world’s wealthiest households come from 124 nationalities and speak 91 languages between them. The average professional is 43 and brings around 16 years of experience. This is an experienced, mobile, very international workforce.
The Filipino workforce behind private wealth
After French nationals, the second most common nationality in the network is Filipino, by a wide margin. Tagalog is among the most widely spoken languages across the candidate base. Many bring far more than their current title suggests.
“Many of our Filipino candidates worked as engineers or chemists at home, but their diplomas aren’t valid abroad. It’s important to understand their background to know what they’re able to do.”
Laurine Mallet, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet
Experienced, mature, and harder to keep
The private workforce is not young, and it is not transient by choice. The people are more experienced than ever and move on faster than ever, at the same time. Experience is abundant. Loyalty is scarce, and has to be earned.
Source: Morgan & Mallet candidate database, June 2026.
The roles, by the numbers
Role data sheets
Every figure below is drawn from Morgan & Mallet’s own data.
Formal service, table and wine service, wardrobe and silver care, and the discretion that protects the principal.
Care of fine surfaces and fabrics, laundry and wardrobe, household organization, and often light cooking.
Full-time care for children: routines, education support, activities, and travel. Often Montessori or Waldorf trained.
Menu planning, sourcing, and daily cooking for a household. Selection turns on a trial meal.
Runs the operations of one or more residences: staff, vendors, budgets, maintenance, security, inventories.
Manages a principal’s schedule, travel, correspondence and household coordination, often under an NDA.
A couple who live in and run a property together. One of the hardest roles to fill anywhere.
Drives the principal safely and discreetly, maintains the vehicles, and plans routes. History verified 5–7 years back.
Academic tutoring and structured education in a private household, often with language instruction and elite-school prep.
Methodology & how to cite
What the data is, and how to use it
This report is based on Morgan & Mallet’s own recruitment records and candidate database, covering 2016 to 2026. A data point is a real search assignment or application, recorded with a date and a location. Salary figures come from Morgan & Mallet’s 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report.
We report what our own data can defensibly support: scarcity ratios, network composition, and pay. We deliberately do not report demand growth over time by country, because those numbers track Morgan & Mallet’s own expansion into new markets rather than the underlying market. We would rather publish fewer figures we can stand behind than more we cannot.
According to the Morgan & Mallet Household Staff Industry Report 2026, the personal assistant is the most contested role in private service, drawing around 112 applications per search.
Permanent home: householdstaff.agency/household-staff-industry-report/ · Data requests & interviews: [email protected]
Author and report spokesperson: Morgan Richez, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet. Childcare and culinary findings reviewed by Laurine Mallet.
Morgan & Mallet research
More from our reports
This is one of several reports Morgan & Mallet publishes through the year on the private staffing market. For the full salary data summarised here, read our companion report:
The Morgan & Mallet Household Staff Industry Report
An analysis of 450,000+ applications across 70 countries.
© 2026 Morgan & Mallet · householdstaff.agency · [email protected]
Last updated June 2026.