Domestic work sits in an unusual economic space. It is essential enough to determine whether parents can remain employed and older people can stay at home, yet it often takes place behind a private front door, where working hours, responsibilities and injury risks are difficult to observe. The relationship may feel personal, but the consequences of informality are economic and legal.
On 13 July 2026, nine Chinese departments released measures to promote higher-quality development of the domestic-services sector. The policy supports stronger firms, specialised insurance, digital services, vocational training, integration with home-based elder care and childcare, and more standardised employment. It identifies the right direction. The challenge is whether professionalisation changes the daily bargaining position of workers and families, rather than simply adding platforms, certificates and branded agencies.
Why demand is becoming structural
China’s ageing population, smaller households, internal migration and high female labour-force participation have increased demand for home cleaning, cooking, childcare, rehabilitation support and elder care. Families often combine paid care with unpaid labour by daughters, daughters-in-law and grandparents. When public services are thin, the household becomes the final coordinator of care.
This demand is not a temporary consumer trend. It is part of the country’s care infrastructure. Treating it only as a market opportunity misses the public interest in safety, affordability, workforce stability and continuity for vulnerable people.
A standard service still needs a negotiated household
Standard contracts can clarify hours, tasks, rest, payment, accommodation, privacy and termination. Yet domestic work changes in practice. A cleaner may be asked to supervise a child; an elder-care worker may begin handling medication; a live-in worker may be considered permanently available. Scope expansion is often gradual and difficult to refuse.
Contracts therefore need simple mechanisms for changing duties and fees, recording overtime and escalating unsafe requests. Standardisation should not mean pretending every household is identical. It should establish a floor from which specific care can be negotiated.
Insurance must follow the actual risk
The 2026 measures encourage insurance products covering personal injury, property loss and liability. This is valuable because domestic workers face lifting injuries, falls, chemical exposure, travel between clients and accusations over damaged property. Employers also need confidence that genuine accidents can be resolved without devastating either party.
Coverage must be readable and portable. A worker serving several homes through different platforms should not fall between policies. Exclusions, deductibles and claims procedures matter more than the existence of a product. Insurance should supplement, not replace, clear responsibility and social protection.
Training should create mobility, not a certificate market
Care work requires practical skills: safe transfers, dementia communication, infant feeding, food hygiene, emergency response and professional boundaries. Training can improve outcomes and wages if qualifications are recognised across employers and linked to real competence.
A weak system risks selling certificates to workers without improving instruction, while families remain unable to compare skills. Assessment should include supervised practice, renewal for safety-critical roles and routes from entry-level work into specialised care. Workers need career ladders, not repeated fees for decorative credentials.
Digital platforms can formalise and fragment at the same time
Platforms can match workers and households, verify identity, record contracts and process payment. They can also push price competition, obscure who the employer is, penalise workers through ratings and collect sensitive information from inside homes. The policy’s support for digital services must be paired with platform accountability.
Workers should be able to challenge ratings, access their records and understand deductions. Families should know whether a platform is an employer, an agency or merely an intermediary. Data about children, older people, home layouts and schedules requires strict minimisation and security.
Professional dignity depends on boundaries
Domestic workers frequently navigate intimacy without equal power. They may know family conflicts, health conditions and finances, while sleeping in a workplace they cannot easily leave. Respect requires privacy in both directions, freedom from harassment, access to rest and a way to seek help without losing all income.
Public messaging should avoid describing workers as naturally self-sacrificing “family members”. Warm relationships can develop, but family language must not erase wages, time off or the right to end employment. Care is more reliable when goodwill rests on fair terms.
Affordability is the other side of decent work
Higher standards, insurance and training cost money. If all of that cost is transferred to households, middle-income families may reduce formal care and lower-income families may never enter the market. A sustainable care system cannot be built by forcing workers to subsidise affordability through low wages, but neither can it assume every family can pay the full social cost alone.
Public funding can target services with clear social value, including respite, disability support, infant care and ageing at home. Tax treatment and vouchers should be designed to formalise employment rather than inflate agency margins. Subsidies need quality conditions and transparent prices.
Local variation matters. A prosperous coastal city, a county town and a village with many older residents face different labour supply, travel and housing conditions. National standards should establish rights and safety while allowing delivery models to fit local care networks.
What implementation should measure
The government can track standard-contract use, insurance coverage, training outcomes, wage progression, complaint resolution, worker turnover and service availability outside wealthy cities. It should also examine whether home-based elder-care expansion reduces or merely redistributes unpaid family labour.
Professionalising domestic work is not achieved when an app looks polished or a worker wears a uniform. It is achieved when families can purchase dependable care, workers can build a protected career, and problems inside a private home no longer remain private by default.
